More than likely, you can blame government partisanship, the sad shape of the economy, and, of course, massive special interest groups that are much more financed and organized than the weak environmental movement.
In 2007, the Lieberman-Warner bill aimed to cap greenhouse emissions each year until the year 2050 when they would finally be below levels last seen before 2005. Financial incentives were to be given to businesses and families and the excitement among environmentalists was huge. Gasoline was high at the time the bill began to be debated. Republicans in Congress successfully pushed forth the idea that this bill would add a tax that was burdensome to businesses that the consumers, who were already burdened by high costs at the pump, would rise beyond anything imaginable. At the same time thousands of scientists rejected the idea of man-made global warming. This was the death knell to the bill that had so much promise for environmentalists.
Another attempt was made in 2009 to pass a bill designed to curb emissions. It was called the American Clean Energy and Security Act. Once again, party politics, among other things, killed a promising bill. Do you notice a thread between the two bills that give us a glimpse into why the environmental movement has failed?
I believe that the main reason the environmental movement has taken a back seat and is losing steam is that the very people who would force the issue are too easily pushed aside by other movements that are better organized and funded. Add to that the fact that just when people seemed to be waking up to a world that is harming itself through such vehicles as Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth, the world's attention was grabbed by terrorism and the resulting war on it. Ask people today just how important saving the Earth with real measures that will force big business to take action and most people will say that it is a good idea but that they are more concerned with the economy and in fighting terror. Environmentalism is just not important enough to most people and, even though it was well funded, the scare tactics it used are now rejected by most through a careful and calculated denial by scientists that was very well calculated and enacted by the anti-environmentalists.
