It seems so quaint to think back when bodies would pile up in the streets following the Paris Accord exit
After a wild week of Trump victories and leftist foibles, why not toss another log onto their activism pyre?! A study on the greenhouse emissions in the US has just come out and it shows that last year, measuring various sectors of the economy, we experienced a -2% drop in overall greenhouse gas production.
Of course the mind automatically goes to one pertinent fact: We managed to do so after pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord. Follow up fact: This becomes yet another example of environmental doomsday predictions shown to be wildly hysterical and baseless.
Recall that when President Trump announced we were pulling out of the Paris agreement there was no shortage of outrage and wailing. We were promised the craven act of our President would lead to a sharp rise in deaths, and there was any number of other inaccurate predictions made that would result. And yet here we are seeing a decline in our output without having had to fork over a small fortune of our economy to outside interests.
Despite not following the protocols of the climate alarmists we managed to not only experience a drop in emissions for two of the last 3 years, but we are also currently seeing an output that has fallen below levels of one-quarter of a century ago.
US carbon dioxide emissions hit a 27-year low last year and are projected to continue to decline, the result of increased use of natural gas, renewables, and energy efficiency. pic.twitter.com/I1NTxPyckm
— Richard Meyer (@RichardMeyerDC) February 9, 2020
This shows a few things that the contrarians to the climate crowd had been accurate about in their rebuttals. For one, we do not need to pay off the barking accusator foreign class that blames the US for the world’s bigger problems. We can use a variety of methods to innovate on our own without crippling our economy.
Further, this also shows that while we are usually the target of the environmental outrage class they continue to ignore that other countries, primarily those in Asia, are vastly more egregious when it comes to polluting the atmosphere with the designated greenhouse gasses. Look at this chart from the 2018 global measurements and behold where you see the worst offenders.
Chart of the Day: Last year the United States had the largest decline in CO2 emissions *in the entire world* for the 9th time this century. @AEIdeas @Mark_J_Perry https://t.co/BCnKJTirfE pic.twitter.com/8wN5kZJBDK
— AEI (@AEI) July 14, 2018
As usual, those who are the bigger polluters are rarely focused upon to remedy their offensive output. You are dealing usually with third-world countries or Communist China; in other words, nations not likely to pony up the desired funds coveted by the climate groups. This reality strikes at the heart of the leftists in two ways. Beginning with the global cabal, they cannot leverage the US with polluter’s guilt if we are curtailing our output without their guidelines.
Locally there are other conflicting emotions. One of the primary reasons we are seeing this success is the decrease in coal plant output, that demonized electrical industry supplier. In fact, there has been such a drop in coal plant production that now greenhouse emissions in the energy sector have fallen below that from vehicular output.
Also causing the gnashing of teeth from select enviros will be the fact that the drop in coal is spurred by a sharp increase in natural gas as an alternative.
While this is a cleaner-burning fuel source it is also reviled by those opposed to fracking. There can never be a satisfying solution, you see. Otherwise, the need for environmental alarmists drops faster than coal production.
So here you have a lovely microcosm of Trump derangement in another sector. They hate him despite the fact that we are delivering the very results they demanded of him, but since he did so without their directives then it is an affront and unacceptable. Go ahead, take a deep breath of fresh satisfaction.
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