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The United Kingdom and France announced Feb. 28 that they will support the EU goal of generating 20 percent of the bloc’s electricity from renewable sources by 2020. A day earlier, the United Nations released a 166-page report on climate change calling for a global cap on carbon dioxide emissions by 2020 and an international effort to increase funding by as much as $60 billion annually for clean energy technology such as biofuels, solar and wind.

These events will trigger more investment in alternative and clean energy technologies and add political momentum to the climate change issue around the world. Even more significant, however, are the recent notable gains by U.S. environmental activists in their efforts to push through federal climate change legislation. As the world’s largest economy — and greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter — the United States is the single country upon which all future international climate change negotiations depend.

Since the Democrats took control of Congress in January, the momentum for climate legislation that started after Hurricane Katrina has gained speed. The U.S. Senate now is considering five bills addressing climate change — and at least one more is expected. The common theme among these measures is a call for implementation of a cap-and-trade system, which would set a federal limit on GHG emissions and allow companies to trade their emissions on a national market.