Carbon Dioxide Emissions

From Bill McKibben’s recent piece in the New Yorker:

Adam Kinzinger, a Republican of Illinois, went first, patiently explaining to Thunberg that, “while some may say that the United States needs to be the leader of combating climate change, I would say that we already are. Since 2005, global emissions have increased by twenty per cent, but the United States’ emissions have decreased by more than the next twelve emission-reducing countries combined.” A few minutes later, Garret Graves, a Republican of Louisiana, repeated the sentiment, claiming, “Contrary to popular belief, the United States—the United States—is the country that has led the world in greenhouse-gas reductions.”

The problem with this claim is that it is not true. It’s not true because U.S. carbon emissions actually climbed last year, as the Trump Administration’s policies began to play out.

If the United States is going to act as it must in the years ahead, it needs to shed more than its current President. It also must stop telling itself a persistent fable about its own conduct: namely, that it has made great progress already in cutting its greenhouse-gas emissions. It hasn’t.

Here is the graph of U.S. CO2 emissions over the last 70 years from Cornell University:

Now, why should the story above come as a surprise coming from a country that wallows in misinformation? It’s our stock in trade.

Btw, Bill McKibben will be speaking at the upcoming Bioneers conference that I’ll be attending next weekend.  Looking forward to it, and hoping to meet lots of 2GreenEnergy readers there.