US Pulled Out of Paris Agreement, Still Decreased CO2 More Than Anyone Else
For liberals, only a year ago, the sky was falling.
President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement that pretended to take an international approach to the problem of “climate change” meant doomsday for the world.
The howls from the left bordered on deranged. Former Secretary of State John Kerry even compared Trump to the accused but acquitted killer O.J. Simpson during an interview with NBC’s smarmy Chuck Todd.
To hear the liberals tell it, Trump had committed and environmental atrocity, one that would eventually plunge the earth into utter destruction.
Trump’s decision doesn’t take effect until 2020, so its actual ramifications won’t be known for a while, but the conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute published an enlightening chart in a Twitter post this weekend.
Let’s just say it’s not the world the liberals are trying to portray.
According to AEA, “Last year the United States had the largest decline in CO2 emissions *in the entire world* for the 9th time this century.”
Check it out here:
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
— American Enterprise Institute (@AEI) July 14, 2018
The largest decline in CO2 emissions in the entire world. Just don’t expect the media to report it.
When former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declared last October that the country was heading in that direction, The Washington Post essentially called him a liar. (Giving him “three Pinocchios” on one of those dreadfully biased “fact checks.”)
Fortunately, a Forbes writer with two decades of reporting in the energy field was around to set the record straight.
It’s worth noting that there are several likely reasons for the decline: the American booming natural gas industry, which Democrats and the Obama administration did their best to destroy; as well as increased production of energy through renewable means (wind and solar power) that liberals love to think is mankind’s salvation.
Inside Climate Change summed it up like this: “Market forces, including the low price of renewables and natural gas, as well as a growing appetite for renewable energy fueled the decrease in U.S. emissions.”
Of course, liberals will claim credit that their beloved wind farms and solar power panels aren’t entirely useless. Let them.
The reality is that the explosion in the use of natural gas, a source of energy the United States possesses in abundance, took place in the country in the face of fierce government resistance during the Obama years – the exact opposite of the coddling atmosphere so-called renewable energy sources have been exposed to. Unleased from a government determined to strangle fossil fuels, the industry is likely to continue revolutionizing American industry, even without the blessing of the corrupt idealogues of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Regardless, the irony can’t be ignored that the decline took place in the year Trump announced the U.S. was abandoning the Paris agreement. As the president pointed out at the time, the Obama-era agreement is hideously expensive, onerous on countries like the United States and gives a free ride to major polluters like India.
For liberals, Trump’s decision meant the sky was falling. For American energy companies, though, it meant the future was beginning all over again.
And that’s going to be good for the world – even the liberals.
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