All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years, when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output wi… - Jimmy Carter

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All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years, when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to 2 years' increase in our own Nation's energy demand. Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980's, it can't go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden. One choice, of course, is to continue doing what we've been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would carry only one person--the driver--while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our homes, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

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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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For instance, I have never believed that Jesus Christ would approve either abortions or the death penalty, but I obeyed such Supreme Court decisions to the best of my ability, at the same time attempting to minimize what I considered to be their adverse impact.

I don't think the U.N. has any jurisdiction. And particularly when this question is raised by Cuba, a government that has no respect for individual freedom or individual liberty and permits no vote of any kind in their own country, to accuse us of trying to subjugate the people of Puerto Rico, to me, is absolutely and patently ridiculous.

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As you know, we have a longstanding treaty with the Soviet Union preventing any atomic explosions in space. But we were guilty of that a long time ago. I think it's time to reexamine that question. I believe that this recent incident with the Soviet satellite has shown that we don't have an adequate, guaranteed safety requirement on nuclear fuel in space. This particular satellite and all those that we've ever launched—I think the first one we put up using nuclear power was in 1965—they have what's called a subcritical mass there's not enough radioactivity there to cause an explosion under any circumstances. And when the satellite is first launched, it's relatively clean; you could get probably close to it without having radiation. The longer it burns, the more byproducts are made and the more radioactive they become. This particular satellite was designed, as are most of them, to be elevated into a higher orbit when it had served its purpose. And when the Soviets attempted to elevate it into a higher orbit, which would have kept it in space for a thousand years or more, some mechanism failed—I don't know the details of it. But I think that we now are in the process of deciding' what we can do to minimize this danger from space. One possibility would be to design such a nuclear powerplant, which is very small, so that it would surely burn completely as it came down through space itself by increasing the drag of friction, and so forth. Another one would be to have standby mechanisms, so that if the first one failed to eject it into outer orbit, another standby would be required. This is something that we have not yet gone into in any definitive way. We have a much higher reliance, as you may know, on solar panel power supplies, and we do not rely on the atomic power supplies as much. But you have a good question. It's something that we have not yet addressed with the Soviets, but I'm sure it's something that we will address.

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