2009-40=?

Memo to Tom Hayden: People are more likely to believe the scientific claims in your article if you don't make colossal mathematical errors in the opening paragraphs.

I sat in the White House Cabinet room as the president and his advisers formulated their official plan to garner half of America's energy from solar and conservation by 2020. At the table were union officials pleased at a White House report that showed an enormous number of jobs would be created for welders, plumbers, sheet metal workers, electrical engineers, carpenters and architects.

That meeting took place 40 years ago.

The president was Jimmy Carter. His 1978 Council on Environmental Quality had concluded that "it is now possible to speak realistically of the United States becoming a solar society."