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Natural Gas is Now Getting in the Way; US Carbon Emissions Increase by 3.4% (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report: "The US was already off track in meeting its Paris Agreement targets. The gap is even wider headed into 2019." That's the dire news from Rhodium Group, a research firm that released preliminary estimates of US carbon emissions in 2018. Though the Trump administration said it would exit the Paris Agreement in 2017, the US is still bound by the agreement to submit progress reports until 2020. But the administration has justified regulatory rollbacks since then, claiming that regulation from the US government is unnecessary because emissions were trending downward anyway. But it appears that emissions have increased 3.4 percent in 2018 across the US economy, the second-largest annual increase in 20 years, according to Rhodium Group's preliminary data. (2010, when the US started recovering from the recession, was the largest annual increase in the last two decades.)
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
This reversal of course -- the first increase in emissions in three years -- came from a few sources. Carbon emissions from the US electricity sector increased by 1.9 percent, largely because the installation of new natural gas plants has outpaced coal retirements. Cheap natural gas has been credited with killing coal, which is a dirtier fossil fuel in terms of emissions. But natural gas is a fossil fuel, too, and burning more natural gas than is needed to simply replace coal will result in more carbon emissions. But electricity wasn't the main culprit. Transportation was.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fucking moron that serves as a titular example of the Dunning Kruger effect in action. A "Green New Deal" would literally destroy America much like the Great Leap Forward did to China!
Life is not for the lazy.
No, lets just be honest. You posted this article because it bashed America. That is the real reason why you did it. You never even thought of China or India, or actually anyone else. You saw that it bashed American and you went with it. That is the reason, nothing more, and nothing less.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
This has been my position since day one. We are all in this together. But Amjo and the rest of the EU snobbery keep the "blame America" for all the worlds problems alive an running. Constantly the same thing over and over not looking at China, India or even Africa as a source of carbon emissions. Fact is America is doing damn good right now at reducing our emissions. I'm sorry that its not up to EU standards but we refuse to sacrifice our economy to make you happy. We refuse to transfer billions of dollars to other countries just because you say so.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.