Jimmy Carter raised climate change concerns 35 years before the Paris Accords

Jimmy Carter's environmental legacy, from green campaign branding to early climate change warnings, remains relevant today.

When Jimmy Carter chose branding designs for his U.S. presidential campaign in the 1970s, he passed on the usual red, white and blue. He wanted green.

Emphasising how much the Georgia Democrat enjoyed nature and prioritised environmental policy, the colour became ubiquitous. On buttons, bumper stickers, brochures, the sign rechristening the old Plains train depot as his campaign headquarters. Even the hometown Election Night party.

“The minute it was announced, we all had the shirts to put on — and they were green, too,” said LeAnne Smith, Carter’s niece, recalling the 1976 victory celebration.

Nearly a half-century later, environmental advocates are remembering Carter, who died on December 29 at the age of 100, as a president who elevated environmental stewardship, energy conservation and discussions about the global threat of rising carbon dioxide levels.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to abandon the renewable energy investments that President Joe Biden included in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, echoing how President Ronald Reagan dismantled the solar panels Carter installed on the White House roof. But politics aside, the scientific consensus has settled where Carter stood two generations earlier.

“President Carter was four decades ahead of his time,” said Manish Bapna, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council. Carter called for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions well before “climate change” was part of the American lexicon, he said.

Former Vice President Al Gore, whose climate advocacy earned him the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, called Carter “a lifelong role model for the entire environmental movement.”