Thursday, January 30, 2020

Better Than Nothing? Not Really.


The government of the United States of Trump has released a report projecting that US CO2 emissions will decline by a staggering 4 per cent by 2050 from 2019 levels.
Projections from the administration, released in its annual energy outlook, find carbon emissions are likely to decrease through the 2020s before picking up again in the 2030s. 
The trend line leaves U.S. carbon emissions almost exactly where they are right now. 
“Total U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions resume modest growth in the 2030s, driven largely by increases in energy demand in the transportation and industrial sectors; however, by 2050, they remain 4 percent lower than 2019 levels,” the report says. 
Though a number of states have set goals to have their electric sector be carbon neutral by 2050 or sooner, the report suggests those efforts could be derailed by growing transportation emissions, which are currently the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.)
The report is a blaring "Up Yours" to climate science types who have warned that our only hope of averting catastrophic climate change depends on slashing GHG emissions by half by 2030 and entirely by 2050.  In essence, the United States is signing humanity's death warrant.

2 comments:

Danneau said...

Was up in the middle of the night with the thought that a recent impulse to re-read/backfill a reading of the oeuvre of Camus was well-timed as I snuck into the "office" and pulled out volume 2 of the Pléiade edition and started re-reading La Peste (The Plague), prefaced by four Letters to a German Friend from the moments preceding the Second World War). What with the commentary on the rise of authoritarian régimes and the spread of coronavirus, it just seemed like too delicious a coincidence to miss. Probably won't change my outlook much, but it's great prose and better than Netflix.

The Disaffected Lib said...

Many thanks for that, Danneau. I will try to check it out. I can see the parallels.