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TOM WHEELER:

Welcome to the Econews Report. I'm your host this week, Tom Wheeler, executive director of EPIC, the Environmental Protection Information Center. And if you are like me, you watched Jimmy Carter's recent funeral and were just astounded by all of the great stories that came out of this, of this man, of this president, and so this being an environmental show, this being, it felt right and fitting to, to honor his environmental legacy.

And so joining me is Rich McIntyre, executive director of Leadership and Jobs for a New Economy and director of the CROP Project, CROP being Cannabis Removal on Public Lands. Welcome to the Econews, Rich.

RICH McINTYRE:

A pleasure to be with you and to see you again. Thanks for having me.

WHEELER:

Yeah. So you had a special relationship with Jimmy Carter. Let me, let me back up and say, I was born in 1987. So I, I did not experience any of the Carter administration. I experienced technically part of the Reagan administration, don't remember it. And so I've always heard story about the Carter years. And I think that his reputation and his legacy has, has much improved over time that in the immediate aftermath of the Carter administration, there was perhaps a sour taste in people's mouth. Hence Reagan's election in 1980.

But now we, we come to judge the Carter administration much more favorably as, as historians, as, as folks, you knew Jimmy Carter, you were friends with Jimmy Carter, you spent time with him, you have a great understanding of his legacy. Tell me, how did you get to know Jimmy Carter in the first place?

McINTYRE:

That's a great story in and of itself, actually. When President Carter lost the election to Ronald Reagan in 1980, I sent him a letter, and in that letter, I actually wrote the letter two weeks before the election, and I talked in that letter about the difference that his presidency had made in my life. And actually, when he implemented his human rights policy, I had friends in Argentina that were disappearing. And when he implemented his human rights policy and tried to cut off all aid to Chile and Argentina, if they didn't stop it, they did. They stopped kicking people out of helicopters, and he saved those people's lives.

So I mentioned that to him in this letter, and I talked to him about the legacy that he has left and his environmental legacy as well. And it was a two-page letter. It was heartfelt. And I talked about the difference that he had made in my life and taught me the difference between love of government and love of country. And two weeks later, the phone rang, and it was him. A woman comes on the line, I think it was a woman, and says, can you take a phone call from President Carter? And I went, yeah, right. She went, no, no, no. This is actually real.

And so we ended up chatting. And one of the things that I said in my letter and that we did in our conversation is I invited him. I was living in Montana at the time. I invited him to come to Montana and fish because he was getting into fly fishing and he had obviously expressed a great love for it and interest in it. And I was able to help facilitate an invitation for him to come out and address the Federation of Fly Fishing in Conclave in West Yellowstone in 1980. He came out, that was the first time that we met in person. I was able to spend about a week and a half with him hiking into Yellowstone Park and fishing around Montana. He had helicopters, so that was infinitely easy. And for a trout bum like me, it was like living in heaven.

So we started off our relationship by fishing together for a number of days in Southwestern Montana. That relationship went on for many, many years. He came to my fly fishing lodge in the Climate Basin in Oregon. I spent a lot of time with him in Georgia and that relationship went on for a long time and part of that relationship was talking about the environment and living in the environment and the work that he had done in the environment. And people talk about his environmental legacy, but I'm not sure people know exactly what that means.

WHEELER:

Yeah, let's talk about that.

McINTYRE:

So what he did, I mean, first of all, and it's worth remembering that he did almost all of this after he had lost the election to Ronald Reagan in 1980. He did the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act in 1980. And that in one act created 10 new national parks, nine wildlife refuges, 25 new stretches of wild and scenic rivers, and ultimately contributed over $2 billion to Alaska tourism.

So his legacy of leaving behind actually 39 national parks, citing 39 national parks in the law, including the largest in the country in Alaska, and 18 national monuments of which, unfortunately, I think only 10 or 11 have now survived. I mean, that is a legacy that anyone who enjoys being outside, anyone who enjoys hunting or fishing has to respect and has to remember.

WHEELER:

Well, Teddy Roosevelt often gets a lot of credit for our national park system, but in terms of presidents, I believe Jimmy Carter added more land to the national park system than any other president, effectively doubled it, which is an impressive contribution, right? The Ken Burns, America's National Parks are our greatest idea. He is responsible for a huge, a huge legacy on our landscape. Here in Northern California, we also have a national park to thank or a national park expansion to thank for Jimmy Carter. We had the 1978 expansion of Redwood National Park.

And until very recently, we had the Orick peanut. Rich, are you familiar with the Orick peanut?

McINTYRE:

I am. Yeah, I am indeed.

WHEELER:

All right. So the Orick peanut, as part of the national park expansion, loggers in the area were upset by this. And so to protest and to call attention to what they thought was overreached by the federal government, they carved into a piece of old growth Redwood, a peanut, you know, a sculpture of a peanut. I have to say it was a you really had to kind of squint your eyes to understand that it was a peanut. But and they put on a flatbed truck and they cross took it to Washington, D.C., where, of course, they tried to give it to the president and were turned away by aides at the White House and brought it back to great fanfare to the little town of Orick.

And there it sat for the next 40ish years until 2023, when it was hit by a car and ultimately destroyed. But we had this like fun little piece of history in Orick related to Jimmy Carter and the National Park expansion that whenever I take folks out to the National Park, whenever folks would come to visit, I would always pull over on the side of the road and say, there's the there's the peanut.

McINTYRE:

That's great. That's a great, that's a, that's a great piece of trivia. I'm going to say.

WHEELER:

So, so you got to know the man, peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, as everyone knows, where, where did he get his environmental ethic from? Because, you know, he, he wasn't a, you know, a Western president that had grown up among the grandeur of the mountains and obscenely beautiful scenic landscape that we get to enjoy. He was a farmer from, from Georgia. So why, why did he care about this?

McINTYRE:

Well, he was also a hunter and a fisherman from Georgia. So he was always, he was always interested in the environment. He always loved the outdoors. And when he became president, he saw an opportunity to actually put some of that love into direct action. He also fell into fly fishing in the early 1970s, which is something that a lot of us did back in those days. And from that experience, he gained a great affection for aquatic systems, waters, headwaters. I mean, he told me that, he told me that fly fishing opened his eyes to the grandeur of what was underwater, not just what was above water. And he, I mean, it's ...

I just want to backtrack for half a second. Something to remember is that that environmental legacy that started then lasted almost until he died. And when he was 97, three years ago, he filed a legal appeal to stop a logging road through the Azimbeq National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and won. So, so that, I just wanted to mention that. I think that's a really, really important footnote on the whole, on the whole Alaska conversation. And by the way, you talk about the people at OREC that didn't like him. You should have seen the people in Alaska.

I mean, he, you know, whenever President and Mrs. Carter went somewhere, they always went in. And I've got great stories on this. I'll tell you in a second. He always went into local post offices or the county fair or whatever. And he did that in Alaska and he had people in his space and he stood up for it and he didn't back down. And now what he did in Alaska is contributing over $2 billion a year to the tourism, tourism industry. And Lisa Murkowski actually had nice words to say about him after he, after he died and he was, and they were, they were, they were at war for, actually her father and he were at war for, for many, many years, he called that, by the way, he called his Alaska stuff, the most significant domestic achievement of his life, not just that, but the expansion of expansion of the park in California.

And the other stuff that he did in the lower, in the lower 48 as well. And he also, this is something else I thought was really interesting. He told me, we were sitting in Yellowstone Park one time, we were sitting on Grebe Lake. He always wanted to catch grayling and he'd never caught a grayling before. So we hiked into Grebe Lake. This was before that country burned up in the, burned up in the late eighties. He said, we were sitting there having lunch and I talked to him and I asked him about the Antiquities Act and his use of the Antiquities Act.

And he said, you know, I never even knew that existed until I became president. So he was unaware of the mechanism they ultimately used to preserve more wild land in the United States than any other, than any other president living or dead.

WHEELER:

And I will briefly put on my Cal Poly professor hat. I teach at Cal Poly sometimes. The Antiquities Act, of course, is the law that enables the president to create national monuments. It is unique in that the president can set aside land for conservation without any act of Congress. And President Carter did that to great effect. So, and, and President Carter, I should say in, in signing a, uh, proclamation creating a new national monument follows a great tradition of American presidents in on the way out the door, doing these, these great acts of conservation.

Joe Biden recently has signed two national monuments here in California -- Chuckwalla and Sattitla. So this is often kind of in the presidential playbook on your way out the door. Let's do the thing that would be maybe sometimes controversial and could derail other parts of your domestic agenda and, and leave physical lasting legacy by conserving lands.

McINTYRE:

Yeah, yeah. Very, very, very true. Very, very true. President Carter, there's a, I want to recommend a book to folks who are interested in knowing where he started out his conservation work. His first book was called Outdoor Journal. And that book actually talks about his childhood, hunting and fishing, his early love for the environment. And actually, I'm in there in a few places because he talks about the beginning of our relationship and our fishing together. And I actually ended up going to Georgia at three different times, actually, but spent a week with him. When President Carter lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan, his therapy was to build a cabin in northern Georgia on a stream called Turnip Town Creek, which turned out to be the southernmost drought stream in the United States. And he built all the furniture in that cabin as well. And let me tell you, it is a very, very weird thing to sleep in a bed that a former president made, especially when that bed was originally made for Amy Carter. But I tell this story because he took that piece of land and he did. Back in those days, I started the first stream restoration firm in the world back in the 1970s. And he brought us out to look at Turnip Town Creek and work with him on restoring Turnip Town Creek.

So here's a classic Jimmy Carter story for you. One of the things that we did is we did a population survey on that section of Turnip Town Creek. And you do fish population surveys through a process called electrofishing. I'm sure you're familiar with it, but some people are not. So essentially, you have a positive electrode and a negative electrode hooked to a car battery, and you run a small charge through the water and it stuns the fish. And it allows you to net them, weigh them, measure them, do scale samples, determine their age and how fast they're growing. And then you can release them. And then if you go back two weeks later, your population estimate is based on the number of recaptures.

Well, my company didn't have really expensive electrofishing equipment. We had a little backpack shocker. And the backpack shocker was old and it had a short in it. And so every once in a while, you'd be going through the stream and get a little jolt. And when you get a little jolt, you kind of jump straight up. President Carter insisted on doing everything we were doing, including carrying the backpack shocker. And so about once every 10 minutes in that half hour period of time where he had the backpack shocker on his back before the Secret Service took it away from him, he would get a shock and he would jump in the stream and the Secret Service would instantly tense up. And so we finally finished our work and we walked out of the stream and the head of his detail, Jack, walks over to me and says, headline, environmental consultant kills president held on charges.

WHEELER:

That's great

McINTYRE:

But that's the kind of guy President Carter was. He wanted to be in the middle of everything. He did not consider himself above anyone. He was a man of the people, and he did that consistently through his life. I mean, this is a man, when he walked onto an airplane, would walk through the entire airplane and shake hands with him and introduce himself.

I'll tell you a story, another story, if you don't mind. When we started our fly-fishing lodge in the upper Klamath Basin, our first lodge was in Fort Klamath, which is, for those of you who don't know that part of the Klamath Basin, extreme upper Klamath Basin. Wood River flows through it, tributary of upper Klamath Lake, right below Crater Lake National Park. So very, very rigidly conservative area, even back in those days. So President Carter walks into the local post office, and he shakes hands with people, and this old guy walks in. I've seen him around town. I didn't know his name at the time. And President Carter walks over and shakes his hand, and he says, hi, I'm Jimmy Carter. And the guy says, where are you from? He didn't know who he was. And President Carter said, he looked at me and said, Georgia? And the guy looked at the postmaster and said, boy, there's sure a lot more strangers around here than there used to be.

President Carter loved to tell that story about the Klamath Basin. I heard him tell that story like three or four times afterwards. It's a classic example of the kind of man that he was.

WHEELER:

I love it. So you, you telling me the story about the electric shocker also remind me of one of my favorite Jimmy Carter incidents, which was the rabbit incident where he was fishing during while he was president, I think it was 1979. And he was attacked in his boat by a swamp rabbit who chased him, chased him out. And it was, it was kind of a joke during his presidency and people didn't believe him. But then I think later photos emerged of the rabbit attacking him as he was fishing. I don't know. There's no point to this story other than it is

McINTYRE:

Actually, I'll give you the point of the story. Yeah, yeah, go for it. One time that subject actually came up when we were, I can't remember where, we were fishing someplace and he said, and he said in his classic Southern drawl, he said, you know, don't as things stick in people's minds sometimes, but he said, but he said that did actually help.

WHEELER:

Yeah, well, there's a whole Wikipedia page, I would encourage folks to check it out. You are listening to the Econews Report. We're talking about Jimmy Carter's environmental legacy with Rich McIntyre. So Jimmy Carter also, in his presidency, somewhat famously, added solar panels to the White House. So Jimmy Carter, kind of a study in contradictions, right? A very simple man, farmer from the South, nuclear engineer, on the other hand, had a deep interest in renewable energy and was present during an energy crisis, wanted to increase energy independence and saw that in renewable energy. Did you ever talk with him about putting the solar panels on the White House and his thoughts about our renewable energy future?

McINTYRE:

Yeah, we actually did talk about energy a couple of times. The first time that I brought the subject up, I referenced Ronald Reagan taking them down almost immediately as soon as he became president. Yeah. Because again, a lot of people don't know this, but when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, I think two months later, the solar panels came down off of the White House roof in much the same way that Donald Trump is going to try to do away with windmills and solar farms. And he was genuinely distressed by that because he thought it sent the wrong message to the American people, which in fact it did.

I mean, Jimmy Carter was a visionary. Yes, he was a peanut farmer from Georgia, but you said he was a nuclear engineer. He was a pastor. I mean, this man had a deep and abiding faith that basically directed everything he did in his life. And I mean, he would talk about the Bible and the strictures of the Bible, about taking care of the earth, taking care of the animals and the creatures that are there. And he felt there was a biblical dictate for him to lead on this subject. He also said that he thought that in my lifetime, the majority of power in the United States would ultimately be produced by alternative sources of power. I don't think that's probably not going to happen now because I'm not 35 years old like I was 30 years old, like I was back in those days.

But I think it's important to remember the legacy that he left on that front. It was President Carter who really started that conversation. It was President Carter who really started that movement and it was President Carter who passed the initial legislation to actually create tax breaks to make it happen.

WHEELER:

Well, Rich, I think they maybe should be a little bit more optimistic. We're at 20%, I think, of total U.S. power comes from renewable sources. You're not too old. We have time. We'll get it done.

McINTYRE:

I feel a little bit more optimistic that we weren't looking at the inauguration of Donald Trump on Monday.

WHEELER:

That's true. So, Jimmy Carter, obviously, recently passed. What have you kind of learned about this man? He was your friend for a good number of years, but what have you learned about him from all the tributes that have come out online that has kind of deepened your appreciation or understanding of him as a person?

McINTYRE:

Yeah, it's been, I mean, it's been, it has, it has been really, really moving. A lot of those, there's a lot, it's heartfelt, obviously heartfelt for people. His grandson, his grandson, Chip, did the eulogy, did one, did one of the eulogies. And he mentioned something, and I wanted to jump through the screen and swaddle him when he said it. I want to talk about that for a second. He talked about when you walked into the Carter's house in Plains, right? It was like this really old house, brick. I've been there. I've slept there. It's true. It is, it is very old. I mean, they lived in that house, I think since 1964 or 63, something like, something like that.

But he said, you know, and, and because they were raised in the depression, they had a rack at the end of their rack at the end of their sink where they dried Ziploc bags. And I wanted to, and I wanted to jump through this. I wanted to jump through the screen and throttle it because they didn't do it because they were born in the depression. They did it because it was the environmentally responsible thing to do. And, and I still, I still do that.

I know most people still do that, that I hang out with anyway, and he may have been, and, and, and, and he, and he may have been one of the first, but the tributes that had come out for President Carter, I mean, I'd like to say it's surprising, but I don't think it is. It's easy to love. It's easy to love people after they're gone. I mean, even Trump had something gracious to say about President Carter right before he said, right before he said that he was going to, uh, right before he raised the flags at Mar-a-Lago back to full staff.

So it's been gratifying. I received a lot of phone calls from folks that, that, that we traveled with to rivers around the world. And he touched their lives in fundamental ways. I could not have done what I've done without. He was one of the great mentors of my life. There were times, there were a couple of times in my life where I thought about leaving the conservation movement and working full-time in politics, which I did a fair amount of. In fact, Jimmy Carter got me my first Senate campaign management job. He actually, that's a different, a different story, but, but President Carter lived his heart and he lived his soul and, and his, and his love for the environment was not in any way contrived, nor was it, nor, nor, nor was it selfish.

I mean, he was constantly out there giving. When I did, when he came and visited our fly fishing, he came to our lodge in Oregon a couple of times, a fly fishing lodge in Oregon. And one of the things he wanted to do is he wanted to meet, he wanted to meet some of the people in the Valley. He wanted to meet some of the ranchers and the kids in the Valley. So I set up a fly fishing class for the Valley kids. And Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter spent two and a half hours doing fly fishing lessons for kids in the word of the Valley. Very, very cool.

WHEELER:

is very cool. Those kids now have an unbeatable story, right? If you're ever playing two truths and a lie, they will always win.

McINTYRE:

Yeah, it's true, isn't it? Yeah. It's very true.

WHEELER:

So, tell us about your communications with President Carter towards the end of his life and when was the last time you were able to really speak to him and what did you talk about?

McINTYRE:

The last time President Carter and I communed by mail was about, I guess it was three or four years ago, something like that, maybe three years ago. I think the last time we talked on the phone was probably about eight or nine years ago, perhaps longer than that. We always stayed in contact with each other through letters and through occasional phone calls. The last time we was together, I think, was in 2007 or 2008, 2009, something like that.

But the friends that he made, the people he touched and the friends he made around the world, I still stay in touch with. People from New Zealand, people in conservation work from New Zealand to Africa. I mean, we haven't even talked about what he did in Africa. And you can say that eradicating the Guinea worm from Africa is not a conservation move, but in many ways I would suggest that it is. I had a really moving note from a guy that I met at the Carter Center, who actually worked with President Carter on the Guinea worm eradication in Africa.

The man did so much in his life, both his private life and his personal, his presidency. And then afterwards, it's hard to get it all into a half-hour conversation.

WHEELER:

Absolutely.

WHEELER:

So in life, I think it's often important for us to have individuals that we can emulate, that that have lived these extraordinary lives that exemplify the virtues and the values that we want to, to show ourselves. And I think that Jimmy Carter is absolutely one of those sort of people. Can you talk about what are the lasting character traits in Jimmy Carter or virtues or values that he exhibited that you try to live through in your own life and how, how Jimmy Carter as a role model or inspiration plays out in your life?

McINTYRE:

Sure. Well, he sets a pretty tough immulative standard to follow. President Carter lived his faith. I mean, he lived his faith more than anyone I've ever met in my life. And it wasn't just religious faith. There was faith in people as well, and faith in the earth, the earth's ability to heal itself. One of the reasons he was interested in my reclamation work was we were writing papers on how quickly streams can return to form if very, very minor work is done, the freaking cattle are removed from the banks and the streams allowed to heal itself. He understood the context between the environment, his faith, and what he could do for the world. And to a minor extent, I've tried to let that guide my own life. He said, always live your faith. And then he said, but your faith doesn't have to be religious.

So protecting the environment, the work that we do, you and I together, people listening to this broadcast, the other people in the conservation movement, we were one with him. And he was a constant source, a constant source of inspiration to me. I remember one time I was asked to, I was doing grizzly bear research in Montana, and I was asked to take over the Vidal-Brown Foundation, which is a grizzly bear foundation in Montana, to, as an interim executive director, to help them, to help them through a period of time and do some major land acquisitions. And President Carter actually weighed in, and when was that?

That was like in the, that was like in the early 2000s, and actually wrote a letter to the landowner talking about, talking about why he thought it was important for him to enter into this conservation easement, and the importance it would be for the grizzly bears, right? Who the hell else is going to do that? But he wrote that letter, and it made the difference, and we did the conservation easement. And now Bismarck Meadows is a critical piece of grizzly bear habitat in the northern part of, in the northern part of Idaho. And President Carter indirectly, actually directly, played a role in that too, towards the, towards the, what you could call the end of, the end of his life, and in the middle of my conservation life.

WHEELER:

He is a remarkable president, in part because of his ex-president years. He accomplished so much on humanitarian fronts. What do you think he wanted his legacy to be, or how he wanted to be remembered as a president in relation to the environment?

McINTYRE:

We actually had this conversation a couple of times. I would just ask him straight up, I said, what do you want your legacy to be? And he says, I want my legacy to be human rights in the environment, and it is. In my opinion, it's human rights in the environment. And human rights encompasses a lot of different things. He started Habitat for Humanity. How many tens of thousands of homes is Habitat for Humanity built for people? I mean, it's really, really inspiring.

And I mean, when you, again, when you look at his body of work, people talk about, well, you know, he wasn't a very good president, but he really set a good standard as an ex-president. I really disagree with that. Anyone in the conservation movement would disagree with that. Anyone with interest in renewable energies would disagree with that. And anyone who has an interest in human rights would disagree with that.

So I think Jimmy Carter was a great president. He came to office at a very, very difficult time in American history. He was handed a really, really bad set of cards, with the Iran hostage crisis. But he remained true to his faith and true to himself the whole time. And before he left office, he did more good for the environment than the other president in United States history. And that is, and he would appreciate being remembered in that way.

WHEELER:

Well, history, I think we'll remember his presidency more fondly. And it seems that as, as we get a little bit further from it and are able to kind of more, more objectively look back at what he was able to accomplish as president, his reputation as an effective president has grown, and I think it will continue to grow. So we, we continue to reevaluate presidents and his star is only going to continue to rise through that process. Do you have any lasting, we're approaching the end of the show. Do you have any lasting memories that you are going to keep closest to you of a president Carter that kind of sustained you in your work?

McINTYRE:

Something most people don't know is he had a hell of a sense of humor. He was a very, very funny man and he loved irony. One time we were fishing, I can't remember exactly where it was, we were fishing with three or four other people and he was downstream from me a little bit and he just caught a fish and he calls out to me in this soft southern drawl, he says, Rich, come over here, I like the way you measure fish. He was making fun of me for my exaggeration, I tend to exaggerate on the size of the fish that we catch, so I will leave you with that one because for some reason that pops into my head a lot. I don't know why, but to me that was really indicative of his sense of humor and his ability to poke fun at someone he liked in a very, very gentle and positive way.

WHEELER:

I love it. Rich, it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure to see you. We haven't seen each other in so long and it's been a pleasure to catch up and hear about your life and your interactions with Jimmy Carter. I hope that other folks listening will enjoy this too. All right. Well, be well and we'll, we'll be in touch soon. Okay.

McINTYRE:

Thanks, Tom. Continue your good work and to the folks who are listening, try to find something to do good because somebody to try to find something good to do for the environment in his.

WHEELER:

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe catch the line or two and get out there and enjoy the environment.

McINTYRE:

It's a.

WHEELER:

RIP

McINTYRE:

Lie about the size of the fish that you catch.

WHEELER:

Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, this has been another episode of the Econews Report. Join us again next week on this time and channel for more environmental news from the North Coast of California.