No Solar Panels In The White House
Welcome to the Put Solar On It Road Trip! This September, 350.org and a group of students are driving from Unity College in Maine down to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to bring one of Jimmy Carter’s original solar panels back the White House.
The panel comes with an ask for President Obama: put solar back on the White House and lead our country to a clean energy future.
When President Carter installed a set of solar panels on the White House in 1979, he offered the following prophecy:
In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy. A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.
Carter didn’t know at the time that just seven years later his panels would be removed from the White House roof by President Regan (who also let subsidies for solar power expire, stymieing the industry’s development). Since then, our misguided energy policy has made solar panels a curiosity for too many Americans.
Together, we’re going to reclaim the sense of solar adventure — literally. Follow the road trip’s progress next week as we start our way down the East Cost from Maine, stopping in Boston, New York, and finally arriving at the gates of the White House.
With your support, we can re-charge America and get solar panels back where they belong: on the roof of the White House and on roofs around the world.
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