Opinion | What If Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan Lived In This Alternate Timeline?

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

71% : My friend Andy Karsner, who was an assistant energy secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy under President George W. Bush and helped to persuade Bush to be the first president to light up the White House Christmas tree with superefficient LED bulbs, once remarked to me: "Symbolism counts in politics.
49% : "By 1986," Biello noted, "the Reagan administration had gutted the research and development budgets for renewable energy at the then-fledgling U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E.) and eliminated tax breaks for the deployment of wind turbines and solar technologies -- recommitting the nation to reliance on cheap but polluting fossil fuels, often from foreign suppliers."
29% : In reflecting on Jimmy Carter's death, my mind skipped to the Apple TV+ streaming series "For All Mankind," an alternate reality drama that imagines how the world might have been if it was the Soviets, not the Americans, who walked on the moon first during the Cold War space race.
28% : By doubling down on fossil fuels -- while also spurring Saudi Arabia to pump more oil -- Reagan helped to drive the global price of crude oil down to about $20 a barrel in the late 1980s.
6% : In my alternate reality -- let's call it "Chasing the Sun for All Mankind" -- Reagan, instead of ordering Carter's crude solar panels to be removed in 1986, would have doubled down on solar power.

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