From the 'greenest government ever' to Deepwater Horizon to the individuals of the year, John Vidal sums up the highs and lows of 2010

Britain

A new coalition Tory/Lib-Dem government promised to be the greenest ever. But it proceeded to cut the budget of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by 30%, prepared to sell off 635,000 acres of English woodland and forest, pressed ahead with new nuclear power and abandoned "Warm front" grants for the fuel-poor to insulate their homes. However, the British wind power revolution stayed on track with proposals for energy pricing, the new government fulfilled its pledge to halt a third runway at Heathrow, and made it possible for individuals to be paid to generate their own electricity with "feed-in tariffs".

Deepwater Horizon

The $40bn BP oil platform disaster was the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Eleven people died and 17 were injured when the rig exploded on 20 April, and for the next three months a ruptured sea floor "gusher" spilt an estimated 4.9m barrels of oil, or around 200m US gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. The jury is still out on the ecological damage done to the already polluted, and over-fished sea, but estimates range from long-term catastrophe to relatively minor harm.

Climate talks

2010 saw the UN talks get back on track at Cancún. After the diplomatic debacle in Copenhagen in December 2009, when trust between countries broke down, it took three UN meetings in Bonn before nations finally started negotiating properly again. In the end, the Cancún talks failed to address key issues like the level of rich nations' emission cuts and made no extra money available for poor countries to adapt their economies.

Biodiversity

2010 was UN's year of biodiversity and it culminated in 193 countries and 18,000 people meeting in Nagoya, Japan for a summit to address the alarming losses seen in forests, plant and animal species. Countries pledged to protect ecosystems, halve the rate of loss of natural habitats, protect marine, coral and coastal areas and restore at least 15% of degraded areas. Whether they have the political will to act and force though new laws is an open question. Meanwhile satellite imagery showed countries like China planting hundreds of millions of trees in 2010 but natural forests continuing to decline worldwide. Other research showed both the US and Canada with higher percentages of forest loss than Brazil, which in 2010 dropped its clearance rate almost 75%.

The stolen climate emails

What began in 2009 with the theft and the subsequent leaking online of hundreds of private emails and documents exchanged between many of the world's leading climate scientists, led to claims that they showed scientists manipulating and suppressing data to back up a theory of man-made climate change. This in turn threw serious doubts on the findings of the UN's Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its director, Rajendra Pachauri. But four separate inquiries completed in 2010 cleared professor Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's climatic research unit, and his colleagues of the most serious charges. Instead, questions were levelled at the way in which they responded to requests for information. Pachauri survived attacks from right-wing newspapers in Britain but proposed major reform of the IPCC.

Fish

It was mostly a good year for oceans. The Obama administration reinstated a ban on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast, Chile saved a marine reserve known for its rare Humboldt penguins, blue whales and sea lions from the construction of a coal-fired power plant and the US banned bottom trawling in a 23,000 square mile area off the Southeast Atlantic coast. Sea protection group Oceana also reported that Belize became the third country in the world to ban all forms of trawling, Morocco and Turkey ended the use of illegal drift-nets and Chile announced the formation of the world's fourth-largest no-take marine reserve. Britain also announced a massive new marine park around the Chagos islands in the Indian ocean but outraged Mauritius when it became clear it that this was to prevent exiled islanders ever returning to their homeland. The bad news was that the EU failed again to stop exploitation of over-fished fishing stocks, reducing the allowable catch by only 5% in 2011.

Temperatures

2010 was, provisionally, the hottest year recorded worldwide but it also saw some of the coldest temperatures and heaviest snow ever witnessed in Britain. Seventeen countries broke heat records, with an unprecedented heatwave and forest fires gripping much of Russia and the Middle east for weeks. An Asian record temperature of 53.7C (129F) in Pakistan and the third greatest loss of Arctic sea ice were also recorded. Strangely, while overall sea and land temperatures climbed to their highest levels in places where people mostly did not live, the more heavily populated temperate zones, including much of Britain, Europe and the US, experienced below average temperatures. The year ended with CO2 levels at their highest level ever recorded.

Individuals of the year

Rajendra Pachauri: the head of the IPCC admitted "shortfalls and mistakes" in the 2007 overview of climate science and was victimised, libelled and personally stung by right wing critics in the US and the UK. But he retained the backing of countries, won fulsome apologies in British papers and pledged to reform the sorely under-resourced body.

Caroline Lucas: the first British Green MP convincingly won Brighton Pavilion constituency in the May general election and has quickly become a recognisable national figurehead.

Pablo Solon: The UN ambassador became the face of Bolivia, the only country to stand against the low ambition shown by other countries in the Cancún climate summit. Bolivia also hosted the World people's climate summit where 45,000 people from 120 countries met in April to assert the "rights of Mother Nature."

Nnimmo Bassey: The Nigerian chair of Friends of the Earth International was awarded an alternative Nobel prize for his work which included taking Shell to court in Holland for its massive oil pollution in the Niger delta.

Bryony Worthington: Blessings never ceased to rain on the director of carbon offset pressure group Sandbag. Having had a baby, she was then ennobled on the recommendation of the former energy secretary and now Labour leader Ed Miliband. But the Baroness will have to earn her spurs in the House of Lords.

Simon Burkett: the former banker who left the City to set up the Campaign for Clean Air in London has almost single-handedly brought the UK government to its knees, begging for more time from Europe to lower pollution levels in London and forcing mayor Boris Johnson to act.

Upwards in 2011

Population: The largely forgotten issue will get a mighty leg-up in 2011 when the global total hits 7 billion – less than 13 years after reaching 6 billion.

GM crops: Africa is now the new testbed for GM crops as the biggest chemical companies press for entry into the poorest countries and argue that the technology will counter climate change.

Climate: After Copenhagen, Climategate, and the US mid-term elections which scotched any US climate legislation for years, the heat came off politicians to act. This will change as the Durban UN conference approaches and countries are forced to submit more ambitious pledges. However, several court cases went against campaigners and could "chill" direct action.

Geo-engineering: Like it or not, politicians and scientists are having to discuss the options open to remove emissions of politicians fail to persuade business and people to act.



Downwards in 2011

Biodiversity: British conservation is in crisis with heavy government cuts. Meanwhile, countries are happy to sign up to targets but still loath to act to stop development and incremental losses of nature.

Aviation. The decision to stop a third Heathrow runway was the high point of activists' attempts to curb the growth of aviation. From now on the agenda will move to less high profile regional airports.