"Who would have thought the United States would one day be a
leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions?" asks Porter. "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," he adds, "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." "What stands
out most in this shift, however, is not environmental regulation
or public concern about global warming but the price of energy
and market-driv