Carol Martha Browner is an American lawyer,environmentalist and businesswoman who served as director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy in the Obama administration from 2009 to 2011. Browner previously served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during the Clinton administration from 1993 to 2001. She currently works as a Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group,a global business strategy firm.
The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) is an environmental nonprofit organization based in Arlington,Virginia. Launched in 2011,C2ES is the successor to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. C2ES lobbies policymakers to promote their preferred policies at the state,national,and international levels.
William Kane Reilly is an American politician. He has previously served as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush. He has served as president of World Wildlife Fund,as a founder or advisor to several business ventures,and on many boards of directors. In 2010,he was appointed by President Barack Obama co-chair of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling to investigate the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP),formed in 2006 and launched publicly on January 22,2007,is a co-operative group of businesses and leading environmental organizations. The group's primary purpose is to call on the U.S. government to require significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
The United States produced 5.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2020,the second largest in the world after greenhouse gas emissions by China and among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person. In 2019 China is estimated to have emitted 27% of world GHG,followed by the United States with 11%,then India with 6.6%. In total the United States has emitted a quarter of world GHG,more than any other country. Annual emissions are over 15 tons per person and,amongst the top eight emitters,is the highest country by greenhouse gas emissions per person.
Claudine Schneider is an American politician and executive who served five terms as a Republican U.S. representative from Rhode Island from 1981 to 1991. She was the first,and to date only,woman elected to Congress from Rhode Island.
The environmental policy of the United States is a federal governmental action to regulate activities that have an environmental impact in the United States. The goal of environmental policy is to protect the environment for future generations while interfering as little as possible with the efficiency of commerce or the liberty of the people and to limit inequity in who is burdened with environmental costs. Framing of environmental issues often influences how policies are developed,especially when economic concerns or national security are used to either justify or contest actions. As his first official act bringing in the 1970s,President Richard Nixon signed the U.S. National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) into law on New Year's Day,1970. Also in the same year,America began celebrating Earth Day,which has been called "the big bang of U.S. environmental politics,launching the country on a sweeping social learning curve about ecological management never before experienced or attempted in any other nation." NEPA established a comprehensive US national environmental policy and created the requirement to prepare an environmental impact statement for "major federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the environment." Author and consultant Charles H. Eccleston has called NEPA the world's "environmental Magna Carta".
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established in July 1970 when the White House and the United States Congress came together due to the public's demand for cleaner natural resources. The purpose of the EPA is to repair the damage done to the environment and to set up new criteria to allow Americans to make a clean environment a reality. The ultimate goal of the EPA is to protect human health and the environment.
The climate change policy of the United States has major impacts on global climate change and global climate change mitigation. This is because the United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world after China,and is among the countries with the highest greenhouse gas emissions per person in the world. Cumulatively,the United States has emitted over a trillion metric tons of greenhouse gases,more than any country in the world.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began regulating greenhouse gases (GHGs) under the Clean Air Act from mobile and stationary sources of air pollution for the first time on January 2,2011. Standards for mobile sources have been established pursuant to Section 202 of the CAA,and GHGs from stationary sources are currently controlled under the authority of Part C of Title I of the Act. The basis for regulations was upheld in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in June 2012.
The climate change policy of the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush can be categorized into two major components:a technological strategy to reduce carbon emissions and one with an emission intensity target to reduce carbon emissions by 18 percent. Bush backed out on the promises on the campaign trail to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants;within two months of taking office he walked away from his commitment. One of the most notable policies during his administration is his opposition to the Kyoto Protocol.
Jody Freeman is a Canadian-born American legal scholar at Harvard Law School in administrative law and environmental law. From 2009 to 2010,she was Counselor for Energy and Climate Change in the Obama White House.
Robert Perciasepe is an American former government official who currently serves as a senior adviser to McKinsey and Company and the nonprofit Center for Climate and Energy Solutions,following his role as President of the organization. He served as the Deputy Administrator and Acting Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency during the administration of Barack Obama.
Sherri Lynn Wasserman Goodman is an American security executive and lawyer. She is a Senior Fellow with the Polar Institute and the Environmental Change and Security Program with the Woodrow Wilson International Center,as well as Senior Strategist at the Center for Climate and Security. She is the Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate and Security. Previously,she served as the President and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. She is the author of "Threat Multiplier:Climate,Military Leadership and the Fight for Global Security",published by Island Press in 2024.
Stephen Oliver Andersen is the Director of Research at the Institute for Governance &Sustainable Development (IGSD) and former co-chair (1989–2012) of the Montreal Protocol Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP) where he also chaired and co-chaired Technical Options Committees,Task Forces and Special Reports. He is one of the founders and leading figures in the success of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer that has phased out the chemicals that deplete the stratospheric ozone that protects the Earth against the harmful effects of ultraviolet radiation that causes skin cancer,cataracts,and suppression of the human immune system,destroys agricultural crops and natural ecosystems and deteriorates the built environment. Because ozone-depleting chemicals are also powerful greenhouse gases the Montreal Protocol also protected climate. Dr. Andersen was instrumental in the 2016 Kigali Amendment that will phase down hydrofluorocarbons once necessary to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) fast enough to avoid ozone tipping points,but no longer necessary now that environmentally superior replacements are available or soon to be available. For his ambitious campaign saving the ozone layer,Dr. Andersen earned the 2021 Future of Life Award along with Joe Farman and Susan Solomon.
Nathaniel O. Keohane is an American environmental economist who serves as president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES).
Mary Dolores Nichols is an American attorney and government official who has been the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) since 2007. She also held that post between 1979 and 1983. From 1999 to 2003,she served as secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency in the cabinet of then-Governor Gray Davis. Due to her efforts to combat global warming,she has been dubbed "the Queen of Green",and described as "the most influential environmental regulator in history."
The environmental policy of the first Donald Trump administration represented a shift from the policy priorities and goals of the preceding Barack Obama administration. Where President Obama's environmental agenda prioritized the reduction of carbon emissions through the use of renewable energy with the goal of conserving the environment for future generations,the Trump administration policy was for the US to attain energy independence based on fossil fuel use and to rescind many environmental regulations. By the end of Trump's term,his administration had rolled back 98 environmental rules and regulations,leaving an additional 14 rollbacks still in progress. As of early 2021,the Biden administration was making a public accounting of regulatory decisions under the Trump administration that had been influenced by politics rather than science.
Durwood Zaelke is an American environmental litigator,professor,author,and advocate. As President and founder of the Institute for Governance &Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington,D.C.,and Paris,he currently focuses on fast mitigation strategies to protect the climate,including strategies to reduce short-lived climate pollutants,in the context of the need for speed to limit anthropogenic warming to 1.5 °C.
Brenda Mallory is an American lawyer specializing in environmental law who served as the chair of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Biden administration from 2021 to 2025. She previously served as director of regulatory policy at the Southern Environmental Law Center,and helped lead the Climate 21 Project.
