Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy … - Jimmy Carter

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Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the Government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems-wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both problems at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, by making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and by developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, and every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve just as consumers will. The energy. producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way that we can buy a barrel of oil for about $2. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement cost of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that Government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason that I'm working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption, as we do now, when they only make up 7 percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal, while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth and last principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy that we will rely on in the next century. Now, these 10 principles have guided the development of the policy that I will describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday night.

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About Jimmy Carter

James Earl Carter, Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024) was an American politician and member of the Democratic Party who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 1982 he established the Carter Center, as a base for promoting human rights, democracy, finding peaceful solutions to international conflicts, and advancing economic and social development, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. He was a key figure in the Habitat for Humanity project, and has been noted for his criticism of Israel's role in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.

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Also Known As

Birth Name: James Earl Carter Jr.
Alternative Names: James E. Carter James Carter James Earl Carter 39th President of the United States James E. Carter Jr. James Earl Carter, Jr. James E. Carter, Jr.
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Additional quotes by Jimmy Carter

Well, of course, the '78 crops haven't been planted, except for winter wheat. You know, I'm a farmer, and Senator Talmadge is a farmer. Bob Bergland is a farmer. We have a genuine problem. I would say that in the last 5 years that the cost of producing most crops has increased a hundred percent, certainly as far as equipment prices, energy prices, fertilizer prices is concerned. At the same time, most commodity prices have increased very little, if at all. The debt that farmers now hold has increased rapidly. The amount of reserve finances in country banks is down below the historical averages. We do have a good bit of flexibility within the 1977 agricultural act that the Congress passed and I approved last year. We have large reserve supplies of feed grains, food grains carried over. There's no way to predict what the weather will be this year. We've already initiated a moderate set-aside program at some substantial cost to the Government. And we have about 6 or 7 billion dollars in increased payments authorized to the farmers, because of higher target prices and support prices. What else needs to be done at this point I haven't decided. The impact of the new farm legislation has not yet been felt on the agricultural community of our country. It only went into effect the first day of October, and of course, it hadn't gone through a crop season yet. I think there will be some benefit at least from that. I don't see any possibility of lower prices for fuel, nor for fertilizer. I think that there's going to have to be a sober assessment by the farmers themselves of economic circumstances now and in the future. I live and have always lived among and with farmers. My people have been in-my Carter family has been here over 300 years—we've all been farmers, every generation of us. And it's a characteristic of many farmers to spend this year what you made last year. And I think there's been an inclination with the limited acreage to have a heavier and heavier investment in equipment that's very costly. At the same time, of course, yields have gone up. In the long run, the food and feed demands with a fixed or dwindling acreage supply will correct the problem. But at the present time, we have an excess surplus on hand, and as you've shifted from the smaller tractors and livestock cultivation to the very large tractors, you've cut out the windrows and, in effect, you've gone to a fence-to-fence operation. This has amounted to about, I think, a 50-million acre increase in the land being cultivated. So, with our present set-aside program and the present farm program, we have a step in the right direction. And we will assess other factors, the carryover crops, prospective worldwide production for this 1978 year, the lending capability of farm banks, the amount of debt carried over—we'll analyze all those factors and decide whether to use the flexibility in the present law or to ask for additional legislation. We have not yet decided.

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Many of us in Government, when we see a 6- or 7-percent unemployment rate, are quite pleased if a year ago it was $ or 9 percent. And we tend to forget the human suffering and the challenge and the loss of self-respect and a deep fear about the future that comes with someone who is, as you say, 56 years old, who has worked all your life in one industry, and now is unemployed. I also have a 10-year-old daughter, as you know. She was 10 this week. So, I feel a kinship with you. I can point this out to you to begin with: You are one of the fortunate unemployed, in that the steel industry is a special impacted industry and there are special assistance programs for you. But that's not the way you want to live. You want to earn your own living by working and not get even the assistance that comes from the impacted area. I had a meeting this past week with executives, your own labor leaders, the Members of Congress who represent the steel industry, who came to the Oval Office, to the White House, to meet about what we are going to do concerning the steel industry itself. One of the problems, obviously, is a worldwide semirecession. The growth rate in our economy, the construction of buildings, the construction of homes, the construction of machinery is not growing as rapidly as it has been sometimes in the past, and the order for steel from European, Japanese, and American sources is just down. I think that we will see in our own Nation an increasing demand for steel. Our housing construction now is the highest it's been in many years. Over 2 million housing units per year is the present rate. I think, with passage of a new energy bill--although you're not concerned with energy right now; you're concerned with a job--will provide increasing demands for steel.

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