United States' environmental policies
United States environmental policies encompass a range of regulations and initiatives aimed at addressing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As the world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the U.S. has seen fluctuations in emissions due to various administrations’ approaches. From 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased slightly, while air pollution and renewable energy usage improved. Significant reductions in emissions were achieved between 2007 and 2016, driven by programs like the cap-and-trade established under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990.
The political landscape has heavily influenced environmental policy, with President Obama advocating for renewable energy and emissions reduction, while President Trump rolled back regulations and withdrew from the Paris Agreement. However, President Biden's administration marked a shift back towards addressing climate issues, pledging ambitious targets for emissions reductions and significant investments in clean energy through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. States and local initiatives, such as California's transportation planning law, reflect a diverse approach to tackling environmental challenges across the nation. The evolving U.S. environmental policies illustrate a complex interplay of federal, state, and local efforts aimed at balancing economic interests with climate action.
United States' environmental policies
Historical and Geopolitical Context
The United States is bordered by Canada on the north, Mexico on the south, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It includes the island state of Hawaii, and the state of Alaska is located northwest of Canada. Despite its relatively self-contained and geographically isolated situation, starting in the twentieth century the country has eschewed isolationism and assumed a leadership role in the world. The United States is a relatively young nation but a rich one, though the US national debt has climbed above $30 trillion in the 2020s. The United States is also the world's second-largest greenhouse gas emitter after China.
Impact of American Policies on Climate Change
According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency, from 2000 to 2007, US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions increased by 2 percent, but also during that time air pollution (fine particles) decreased by 12 percent, and renewable energy increased as a share of total energy consumption from 5.4 to 6.7 percent. As a result of these and other ongoing measures, US GHG emissions decreased more than 11 percent from 2007 (the peak year) to 2016. In 2020, gross greenhouse gas emissions within the US had decreased by 7 percent overall since 1990. The United States experienced a significant reduction in carbon emissions between 2019 and 2020, with emissions dropping more than 10 percent. This reduction was attributed to the global Coronavirus Disease pandemic.
The first large and highly successful “cap-and-trade” program in the United States followed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which resulted in a 50-percent decrease in sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions produced by the coal and petroleum industries from 1980 levels by 2007. In 2007, the Democratic-led US Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which aimed to increase production of clean, renewable fuels and the energy performance of the federal government. The administration of President Barack Obama continued the push to reduce carbon emissions through increased use of renewable energy, but he was unable to surmount the opposition of a Republican-led Congress to implementing a nationwide cap-and-trade system. His successor, Donald Trump, took a different tack entirely following his 2017 inauguration, abandoning a position of concern about climate change and instead focusing on dismantling environmental regulations seen as an impediment to business.
Individual states, academic institutions, and business enterprises have enacted their own initiatives to address global warming: In 2008, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a state law to integrate GHG emissions reduction into California’s transportation planning decisions. President Obama asked federal regulators to act on applications by California and ten other states to set stricter fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. Nine governors signed on to the Midwestern GHG Reduction Accord in 2007 (although it has been inactive since 2010), and New York City won an international award for sustainable transport.
In January 2009, outgoing president George W. Bush designated 505,770 square kilometers of Pacific Ocean reefs, islands, surface waters, and sea floor as marine national monuments, thereby restricting fishing, oil exploration, and mining in those areas. Also in 2009, the US Senate advanced legislation to preserve over 809,000 hectares of land in nine states as wilderness. On the downside, a sludge spill in Tennessee of almost 1 million kilograms of toxic materials brought into question the notion of clean coal. President Trump marked his concern for environmental protection with such moves as reducing the size of the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah by nearly half in late 2017. Under President Trump, the US controversially withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2020. However, President Biden, during his first day in office, signed measures to rejoin the program.
The United States as a GHG Emitter
The Kyoto Protocol, which became effective in 2005, established carbon quotas for member countries, which may use carbon sinks (reservoirs of foliage or forests) as a form of “carbon offset.” This ability may be useful to countries with large areas of forest or vegetation. However, for industrial, developed nations such as the United States, land use would have little effect in meeting Kyoto Protocol quotas, since most of the lands have already been cultivated. In addition, developing countries such as Brazil and Indonesia are not compelled to restrict their GHG emissions, which may come from land-use choices such as cultivating crops and destroying forests. As a result, the United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. It did, however, ratify the succeeding Paris Agreement in 2016 and 2021 after briefly withdrawing in 2020.
While the Gulf states that are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have the highest per-capita GHG emissions, data from 2000 shows that—of the top twenty emitters—those with the highest per-capita emissions were the industrialized, or Annex I, countries. Australia, the United States, and Canada ranked fifth, seventh, and ninth, respectively. Their per capita emissions (7.0, 6.6, and 6.1 metric tons per person) were approximately double the emissions of the highest-ranked developing country in the top twenty (South Korea, at 3.0 metric tons), and they were six times those of China (1.1 metric tons). The reasons the United States has such high per-capita GHG emissions include its dependence on fossil fuels to transport people and goods over large distances and its relatively low population density, 93.9 persons per square mile as of 2021.
Summary and Foresight
The European Union (EU) long sought to reduce global GHG emissions and implored other large GHG emitters, such as the United States, to follow suit. Sir Nicholas Stern, an adviser to the British government, testified before the US Congress on the dangers of climate change: Stern had previously authored a report asking the global community to either take “urgent action” on global warming or face severe economic consequences that would “rival the Depression of 1929.” The Americans responded that Stern’s study was “50 years ahead of its time.” Sir Stern may have been prophetic; the economic downturn of 2008 largely focused on the plight of the US automobile industry with its high-GHG-emitting vehicles, which appeared to be losing out to their more energy-efficient foreign counterparts (which largely influenced the design of domestic vehicles in the US following 2008). Years later, in 2021, the US and EU announced a joint agreement that pledged the implementation of measures within both bodies that are aimed at reducing overall methane emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Previously, the EU announced the European Green Deal, a program focused on ensuring the EU becomes carbon neutral by 2050.
The Obama administration linked the rescue and restructuring of the US auto industry to a redesign of its products to be more fuel efficient. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt blamed the bankers and drafted the New Deal, which focused on the US farmer. In the twenty-first century, many believed the United States needed a “Green New Deal,” which could turn environmentally friendly products and techniques into the nation’s major growth sector, driving recovery. President Biden made addressing environmental change one of the key issues of his presidency, and he announced the intention of reducing greenhouse gas emissions within the US to net zero by the midpoint of the twenty-first century. The Biden Administration also announced the goal of reducing the emissions of the power sector to zero by 2030. In December 2021, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at reducing the emissions of the US government by 65 percent by 2030 also. In August 2022, Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which allocated $391 billion to fighting climate change.
In 2023, the EPA updated many of its policies regarding climate change. The organization passed its final rule on methane, which is predicted to prevent the equivalent of more than a billion tons of carbon emissions. Additionally, the EPA passed new standards for both power plants and the transportation sector, with the goal of further reducing the nation's carbon emissions.
Key Facts
- Population: 334.9 million (2023 estimate)
- Area: 9,552,058 square kilometers
- Gross domestic product (GDP): $27.3 trillion (purchasing power parity, 2023 estimate)
- Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): 6,135 in 1990; 6,928 in 2000; 6,511 in 2016; 5,222 in 2020; 4,807 in 2023
- Kyoto Protocol status: Not ratified
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