By Eduardo Porter | The New York Times
Who would have thought the United States would one day be a leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions?
This is the nation, after all, where a former chairman of the Senate committee on the environment, James Inhofe, wrote a book about global warming called “The Greatest Hoax.” This is where a presidential election took place not six months ago in which climate change barely merited a mention, buried under an avalanche of promises to dig for coal and drill for oil.
Fuel economy performance for cars and trucks is still among the worst in the developed world. And only 7 percent of the nation’s energy comes from renewable sources, less than in most other advanced nations.
Yet when President Obama talked about the nation’s energy revolution during his State of the Union address last month, he could have boasted that American emissions of CO2 had fallen almost 13 percent since 2007. It was perhaps the biggest decline among industrial countries, and substantially steeper than in Europe, which has been much more committed to combating climate change.
Carbon emissions from the United States have never fallen this much, not after the first oil price shock following the Arab oil embargo of 1973, nor after the Iranian revolution of 1979, when American drivers suddenly discovered the virtues of Japanese small cars and President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House to heat the water.
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If you’d like to discuss energy issues, contact Court Rich, Co-Chair of Rose Law Group’s Renewable Energy Department at crich@roselawgroup.com
