In 1980 Carter signed into law a bill that established Superfund, a federal program designed to clean up sites contaminated with hazardous substances. By midterm, however, Carter's inability to work closely with the Democratic Congress meant it many initiatives were never passed, to the great disappointment of his supporters. Carter's weakness was exhibited in his 1977 decision to eliminate funding for 19 water resource construction projects, despite strong objections from congressmen who favored the programs. Carter distrusted the programs, based on his own troubled gubernatorial experience with the Army Corps of Engineers, his campaign rhetoric and the rhetoric of his environmentalist supporters, compounded by his lack of experience with Congress. He was forced to retreat, and lost much of his influence on Capitol Hill. Democrats in Congress were displeased with his moralistic, executive-oriented, rational approach to decision-making and his reluctance adjustment to go along with standard congressional methods of compromise, patronage, and logrolling. Carter was successful in the long term in his energy policy, although his poor publicity apparatus obscured that success during his time in office. Americans had become alarmingly dependent on imported oil, purchasing about a fourth of all the OPEC production. American consumption per capita was more than double that of Europe or Japan. Carter's goal was to reverse this dependence. He supported the 1977 laws creating the Department of Energy, and the Emergency Natural Gas Act, and created the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, funded with $20 billion for joint ventures with the private sector. A 1977 memo from President Carter's chief science adviser Frank Press warned of the possibility of catastrophic climate change caused by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations introduced into the atmosphere by fossil fuel consumption. However, other issues—such as known harms to health from pollutants, and avoiding energy dependence on other nations—seemed more pressing and immediate. Energy Secretary James Schlesinger advised that "the policy implications of this issue are still too uncertain to warrant Presidential involvement and policy initiatives", and the fossil fuel industry began sowing doubt about climate science. Cecil Andrus, formerly Governor of Idaho, served as Carter's Secretary of the Interior during 1978 to 1981. He convinced Carter to withdraw nearly half of 375 million acres of public domain land from commercial use in a series of executive moves and new laws. In December 1978 the President placed more 56 million acres of the state's federal lands into the National Park System, protecting