Former President Jimmy Carter is back, this time proposing a carbon tax to fight global warming and calling out skeptics.
“We need something like a carbon tax,” Carter told an audience at a renewable energy conference in Colorado, FOX31 Denver reports. Carter said that such a tax was “the only reasonable approach” to fighting global warming.
Carter also blamed those skeptical of global warming for blocking attempts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and lamented that it was unlikely any landmark climate legislation would make it through a partisan Congress.
“The biggest problem we have right now is some nutcases in our country who don’t believe in global warming,” Carter said. “I think that they are going to change their position because the evidence of the ravages of global warming is coming or is already there.”
“I believe almost anything President Obama advocates, Congress is going to oppose,” lamented Carter.
The former president’s one term in office was mired by energy woes, which pushed him to create the Department of Energy and push for increased resource conservation. During that time the economy was suffering from an oil shortage due to an OPEC oil embargo and federal price controls on energy.
In the midst of it all, Carter announced in 1977 that the world was on the verge of running out of oil and gas with which to power the economy. He warned that production would stop increasing in the 1980s as wells begin to run dry.
“The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out. … World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years,” Carter said in his 1977 Energy Address to the Nation. “But sometime in the 1980’s, it can’t go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.”
“To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful—but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs and to some greater inconvenience for everyone. But the sacrifices can be gradual, realistic, and they are necessary,” Carter added.
Fortunately for the world, oil and gas did not run out during the 1980s. Global oil production has increased since 1980, from 64 million barrels per day to a whopping 90 million barrels per day in 2013. Similarly, natural gas production rose from about 53 trillion cubic feet in 1980 to 119 trillion cubic feet in 2012.
Carter believes Obama is doing the “best he can,” but said the U.S. should use more green energy to generate power.
“We’ve seen some countries devote themselves to renewable energy,” Carter said. “The United States is right at the bottom, with only 10 percent of our energy coming from renewable sources. So we still have a tremendous opportunity to do what we haven’t done.”
Also at the event was liberal San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, reports FOX31 Denver. He was there to raise part of the $100 million he pledged to spend in the upcoming election to back candidates who promote global warming policies.
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