When Ronald Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981, one of the first things his administration did was to take down the White House’s solar panels. These panels had been installed by President Jimmy Carter in reaction to the oil shock of 1979, and were a well-meaning attempt to show that Carter was trying to deal with escalating oil prices by investigating alternative energy sources. Unfortunately, this well-meaning measure like many of his others, never got much traction.
It also didn’t help that OPEC’s reaction to America rationing oil and gas and making forays into alternative energy was to drop the price of oil to $10 per barrel. There was no need to seek anywhere else for energy when oil once again became so cheap.
Was Reagan's solar panel removal cynical, or was it more a kind of posturing to show that this nation would make it through that particular crisis? We'll never know, and it really doesn't matter. We're here now, watching oil prices jump from $150 per barrel last summer to its current $36 per barrel. The fact that pricing for this commodity can vary so wildly in the span of less than a year should make us extremely wary about putting our trust in anything but our own ingenuity.
The Obama administration is incredibly fortunate to be coming in right now regardless of the challenging economic sit uation, because essentially the field is wide open; there are no rules defining what Obama can or can’t do to get us into the new age of alternative energy. These are very exciting times, but with so many other kinds of difficulties to face, how will he deal with the energy situation? There are such a variety of options available, that one just hopes he won't make token gestures such as the one Reagan made 28 years ago. We'll never know the true impact of taking down those solar panels, but we can be quite sure that it didn't help things at all.
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