What ever happened to global warming? As a political issue in the U.S., climate change seems to have all but evaporated.

• Author: Rosenthal, Elisabeth
• Position: ENVIRONMENT

In 2008, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for president, Barack Obama and John McCain, warned about man-made global warming and supported legislation to curb carbon emissions. After he was elected, President Obama promised "a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change."

But three years later, as most other nations accept climate change as a pressing problem, America has turned quiet on the issue.

Though most scientists believe the evidence of climate change has solidified during that time, the topic seems to have fallen off the American political agenda. President Obama now talks about "green jobs" mostly as a strategy for improving the economy, not saving the planet. At the same time, the administration is fighting to exempt U.S. airlines from Europe's plan to charge for carbon emissions when planes land on the Continent. It has also given a tentative green light to expand oil drilling in the Arctic--something Republicans have long supported.

Four-Letter Word?

And in this year's presidential contest, the Republican candidates seem to agree with Texas Governor (and former candidate) Rick Perry that "the science is not settled" on man-made global warming.

"In Washington, 'climate change' has become a lightning rod, it's a four-letter word," says Andrew Hoffman, director of the University of Michigan's Erb Institute for Sustainable Development.

Across the nation, too, belief in man-made global warming--and interest in stopping it--is much less than it was five years ago, when everyone was talking about An Inconvenient Truth, the Oscar-winning documentary about former Vice President Al Gore's climate change crusade. The number of Americans who believe the Earth is warming dropped to 59 percent in 2010 from 79 percent in 2006, according to the Pew Research Group. When a British polling firm asked Americans last summer to list their three most pressing environmental worries, only 27 percent said "global warming/ climate change."

A number of countries have taken steps to control emissions in the last few years. In November, Australia passed a carbon tax (a tax on fuels like oil, gas, and coal that emit carbon when burned). Europe's six-year-old carbon cap-and-trade * system continues its yearly expansion, adding stricter emissions requirements in more areas.

Americans--who produce twice the emissions per capita that Europeans do--are in many ways wired to be holdouts: We prefer bigger cars and bigger homes. We value...