From his inauguration speech, President Obama promised that 2009 would be a year of positive change for the environment. Political momentum and economic crisis gave the green movement fuel for radical change, making 2009 a banner year for environmental happenings. Take a look at what happened in 2009, and what work there is yet to do in 2010.
The catalyst for many of 2009's environmental events may have been the American Clean Energy and Security Act, sometimes called ACES or popularly "cap and trade." Loosely based on a law from the 1970s that reduced acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide, ACES would limit greenhouse gas emissions and penalize businesses that exceed their allowances. Exceptionally clean companies could sell their unused allowances each year as a profit-producing "reward" as the cap gradually lowered to an 80% reduction from 2005 levels.
Contention over this bill was fierce, with supporters hailing the bill as the spark to ignite the "green revolution" that would eventually end America's dependence on oil and slow the advance of global climate change. Detractors labeled the bill as an economy-crippling "job killer" that would concede global trade supremacy to countries without environmental laws like India and China.
The bill was passed in the House with 50% of the votes — the minimum needed to pass it. Sharp criticism was levied against the bill by liberals and conservatives for last minute revisions baked into the text mere hours before voting, including generous provisions for the coal industry. Groups like Greenpeace and scientists like NASA climatologist James Hansen say that cap and trade is a false solution that merely moves pollution around and "sells indulgences" to businesses that wish to continue operating as usual.
Green Tariffs are another contentious point contained in the bill, which offers some level of trade protection for heavy industries like steel smelting. President Obama has gone on record stating that he is against any form of trade protection that is in violation of WTO agreements or could harm relationships with America's economic partners.
After cap and trade narrowly passed in the House of Representatives, public support for the bill has declined. Gallup polls showed the environment fell to last place (20th) among broad American concerns. The economy, jobs, healthcare, and domestic security were among the highest concerns.
Pew Charitable Trusts released research showing that belief in global warming hit an all-time low among Americans in 2009. According to the research, only 57% of Americans believe that global warming is real, and only 36% of the believers said they felt that humans were the cause of the phenomenon. This decline covered the entire political spectrum, but was most pronounced among moderates and independents. The survey reported that 54% of Americans support congressional laws protecting the environment, but that 66% of Americans were against cap and trade, especially those who stated that they "knew a lot" about the legislation.
Other research groups like Ipsos/McClatchy and Harris have shown similar analysis that American concern regarding global climate change has become tepid in recent years.
The Shelton Group, a green marketing research and consulting firm, offered up a study that suggested that this shift may not be in public opinion, but on a long-standing miscategorization that purchasing decisions of thrifty consumers were counted as "green." As Congress's attention shifted from the environment to healthcare in August, support for the cap and trade bill among those who viewed it on OpenCongress.org dropped below 20%.
Cap and Trade entered the Senate Environment and Public Works committee in late October for preparation to be introduced by Senate Majority leader Harry Reid. Chaired by Californian Senator Barbara Boxer and Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a well-known climate skeptic, the committee engaged in bitter arguments over the virtues and shortcomings of the climate bill. Democrats contended that cap and trade would lead to an explosion of growth in offshore wind, solar, and nuclear power generation. Republicans responded with data points that indicated that cap and trade would have a negligible effect on existing climate models due to China and India's dominant role in carbon emissions. Democrats responded that cap and trade was a necessary first step in securing a global climate accord, while Republicans released White House Memos obtained via the Freedom of Information Act that admitted that Cap and Trade would effectively double the existing income tax for average Americans.
Around this same period of time, consulting firm Point Carbon released a report that details how utilities would gain billions in profits under cap and trade, and how the petrochemical industry will transfer virtually the entire burden of the carbon cap on consumers. According to the research, only a select group of regulated utilities like Duke and Southern Energy will face unmitigated penalties for generating greenhouse gasses.
Republican members of the Committee demanded further research, both on the science supporting man-made climate change and the cost-effectiveness of cap and trade. Democrats refused, saying that the science was settled, which ultimately led to a Republican boycott of the markup. Chairwoman Boxer had legal means to advance the bill to the Senate floor without Republican participation, and did so. Currently, every Senate Republican and nine Senate Democrats have pledged to vote against the cap and trade bill. Without a "yea" vote from every Democratic and Independent Senator, cap and trade will fail in 2010.
In late November, just weeks before the major climate summit in Copenhagen, thousands of emails were leaked from a climate research center in the United Kingdom that exposed personal exchanges between climate scientists over the last decade. The Hadley CRU, which serves as the hub for global climate trending research, has been instrumental in generating reports that affect global policy, such as the Assessment Report prepared by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The research performed at the Hadley CRU was also the basis of some of the statements made in the award-winning global warming documentary "An Inconvenient Truth."
Both climate skeptics and global warming supporters have stated that the emails show intent by leading scientists to distort scientific data, abuse the peer review process, and illegally avoid freedom of information act requests. While paleoclimatology (the study of climate trends along geologic history) is only one part of the evidence used to support global warming hypothesis, skeptics have used the leak as ammunition to make the case that the science behind climate change is not settled.
The Environmental Protection Agency announced on the opening day of the Copenhagen climate summit that they had acquired enough evidence to regulate greenhouse gasses through the Clean Air Act, allowing President Obama to bypass Congress. This development, which saw first light a few months after Obama took office, essentially classifies non-toxic greenhouse gasses as dangerous pollution, and allows the EPA to auction off a limited number of pollution allowances to businesses that generate greenhouse gasses in a fashion similar to cap and trade. While taxes must be passed by Congress, the endangerment finding allows the EPA to charge "administrative fees" to the businesses it issues allowances to, performing a similar function with a different name.
This announcement gave American delegates in Copenhagen a bargaining chip for negotiations with developing countries such as China. In the Senate, the move rattled the chains of Democrats and Republicans alike, with Senator John Kerry saying that the "blunt object" that the EPA would use to regulate carbon emissions would be an economic and environmental disaster, while Senator Lamar Alexander stated that Congress had hit a breaking point with the "partisan strong-arm tactics of the White House," and predicted the end of moderate Democrat support for climate legislation. A pair of replacement bills are in the works in the attempt to salvage the climate bill, one of which scraps the cap and trade mechanism entirely.
Internationally, the COP15 Copenhagen Climate Summit kicked off in early December with a furor of protests, conspiracy theories, and controversy. This event, which hoped to have a replacement treaty for the soon-to-expire Kyoto Protocol, was to be the most significant climate summit since 1996.
Chaos and protest among delegates erupted when an alternative treaty was introduced near the start of negotiations, replacing a document that had been in development for the last two years. Unlike the previous treaty, which promised heavy emission cuts from industrial nations and aid for developing countries, the alternative treaty demanded climate actions from poor and rich countries alike and would move future negotiations away from the United Nations, where poorer countries in the G77 have greater political sway.
Delegates reported that instead of open negotiations, most revisions to the accepted text were performed in private meetings between blocs of influential countries, which created a rift between poor and rich nations. EU and American negotiators accused China of playing both sides: helping to author drafts that call for progressive actions from poor and rich countries alike behind closed doors, while publicly protesting that the document demands so much of developing nations. Frustration with China was exacerbated on the final day of negotiations when world leaders including President Obama were forced to negotiate with low level Chinese official who often had to leave the room to make phone calls to his superior.
The treaty was eventually thrown out in favor of a three-page gentleman's agreement to make "nationally appropriate" efforts to limit the increase of average global temperature. Without a legally binding replacement or extension, the Kyoto protocol is set to expire.
As the consumer confidence index increased, the National Research Council prepared a report for the White House detailing the future of electric and hybrid vehicles. This report was meant to offer important details for the sagging American automobile industry, some of which is now publicly owned. The report suggested that the technology and research behind electric vehicles will fail without billions in subsidy each year, but would still only have a 2.5% market penetration by 2030. The report also stated that all-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles have a more severe environmental impact than hybrid and even some gasoline vehicles, which can only be remedied with a large scale transfer to zero-carbon electricity.
The Department of Energy sponsored report advised that funding research of hydrogen, biofuel, and gasoline efficiency may be money better spent. This sent shockwaves through the transportation arm of the greentech industry, which was expecting increasing levels of government subsidy. Afterward, but with no stated relation to the report above, Toyota announced that the Prius plug-in hybrid would be delayed until "at least 2011," while Nissan pushed the release date of their LEAF all-electric vehicle from 2010 to sometime in 2012. GM has not at this time revised their November 2010 release date for the Volt plug-in hybrid.
The top environmental issue for 2010 will likely be the fate of the cap and trade bill in the Senate, as well as the "nationally appropriate action" that Obama promised to announce by February 1st when he signed the Copenhagen Accord. The Mexico City climate summit will attempt to succeed where Copenhagen failed, though the European Union and member countries have made public statements that they intend to dramatically restructure world climate negotiations in light the unproductive outcome of the COP15 summit.
Water management issues are likely to continue to get the lion share of attention and funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, and could increase in intensity if the West and South are revisited by the drought conditions and fires of 2009. With many of the renewable energy projects funded by the recovery act ready to break ground, permitting and NIMBY groups are likely to make a buzz around any new solar, wind, or nuclear project. Forward motion on President Obama's call to end fossil fuel subsidies could spur green growth, though industry groups claiming that this move would have dire effects on domestic oil production.
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