【issues】Top 10 Green Stories

1. Election of Barack Obama

When the presidential campaign began, greens might have thought they'd win either way: Obama and John McCain both supported cation on climate change. But as the campaign wore on, McCain re-entered Republican orthodoxy, declaring his enthusiasm for fossil fuels, while Obama built a program around alternative-energy investment to create green jobs.

2. Congress Passes Renewable-Energy Credits

The tax credits that help build the solar and wind industries in the U.S. were set to expire by the end of 2008, which would have gutted the renewable-energy industry. Partisan gridlock prevented them from being passed until they were tacked onto October's bailout bill.

3. Offshore-Drilling Debate

The chant reverberated from Anchorage to Miami: "Drill, baby, drill." Despite analyses that offshore drilling would have little effect on the price if gas, the slogan caught fire. For now, coastal waters are safe. But the debate isn't over.

4.Failure of Warner-Lieberman

With President Bush firmly opposed, the first national carbon cap-and trade legislation to reach a full vote in the Senate had no chance. As gas prices soared, the bill fell a dozen votes short of the 60 needed to beat a filibuster.

5. New Rules: EPA Puts a Freeze on Coal Plants

Dirty, cheap coal generates 49% of the electricity in the U.S. and 30% of the country's carbon emissions. When an obscure board at the Environmental Protection Agency made it virtually impossible for the agency to certify new coal plants, it halted more than 100 currently planned.

6. Ethanol Bubble Bursts

The only alternative energy to achieve scale in the U.S. has been corn ethanol, now a $32 billion industry. But scientific studies undercut ethanol's green credentials, while the biofuel boom was blamed for record food prices--killing the dream that cornfields would replace oil fields.

7. Polar Bear Listed

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced that the polar bear would be listed as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, the first animal added as a result of global warming, but emphasized that the listing would in no way be used to force reductions in U.S. carbon emissions.

8. Indonesia Warms to Less Deforestation

Currently, there's no program in which developing countries can trade a promise not to clear their forests for cash, like a reverse carbon credit. But in November, Indonesia took the first step in setting up a system that would enable Americans to pay it yo preserve its rain forest.

9. First Co2 Auction

Northeastern utilities bid $38.5 million for the right to emit 12.5 million tons of co2.

10. Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year: Hypermiling

Definition: driving to get extreme mileage out of your gas.