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Forum: Carter speech can guide talk on climate bill

On July 15, 1979, President Jimmy Carter went on national television to give a jolting speech. Billed as an address about the "energy crisis" - the recent cutoff of Iranian fuel that generated long and angry gas lines at home - it wound up lashing out at the American way of life. Carter decried Americans' "self-indulgence and consumption" as well as their "fragmentation and self-interest." This was a "crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will," he asserted.

Today, we should listen to his words again, especially as debates about climate change legislation turn tough and confrontational in the Senate.

Carter believed Americans couldn't solve the energy crisis if they didn't move beyond their own self-interest. He called on Americans to unify themselves around a sense of shared purpose.

Carter's speech has been widely condemned for laying the blame for his own failures on the backs of ordinary citizens. Far from it. For a speech that sounded as if it castigated the American way of life, it won Carter huge amounts of support. The counterintuitive happened: The president criticized his fellow citizens but gained their support.

What better time than now to revisit Carter's speech? The Senate is just about to debate a climate change bill that barely squeaked through the House in late June. Many conservative politicians have complained the bill would wind up taxing citizens for the sake of decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels. Obama's retort has been that the bill would cost less than a postage stamp a day for the average American.

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