…’Largest reduction of all countries’ — ‘U.S. CO2 emissions down to levels not seen since 1964’
Barry Saxifrage
The Vancouver Observer
6/4/2012
The Americans? Really?
Every year the International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates humanity’s CO2 pollution from burning fossil fuels. And once again, the overall story line is one of ever-increasing emissions:
“Global carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel combustion reached a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes in 2011.”
The world has yet to figure out how to stop the relentless increase in climate pollution. But mixed in with all the bad news there was one shining ray of hope. One of the biggest obstacles to climate action may be shifting. As the IEA highlighted:
“US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector … and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector.”
How big is a cut of 430 million tonnes of CO2? It’s equal to all CO2 from all Canadians outside Alberta. From a US perspective, it’s equal to eliminating the combined emissions of ten western states: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada…
The article continues at The Vancouver Observer.
H/T Climate Depot
Also from the site:
Sen Inhofe: Senate Will Vote in Next Two Weeks on Effort to Stop Obama War on Coal
EPA Region 1 Admin. Curt Spalding admitted that due to EPA’s barrage of rules, ‘If you want to build a coal plant you got a big problem… And it’s painful. It’s painful every step of the way’
Poverty Pollutes: ‘Some of the people who express the most concern about the world’s poorest communities are advocating costly, unworkable solutions that will impoverish even more of us. Wealth saves lives. It pays for hospitals, doctors, and medicine. Desperate people with sick children need all of those. The last thing they have time for is well-fed bureaucrats who tell them their poverty equals sustainable living’
…To Spalding’s credit, he at least sounds regretful that the EPA (according to him) absolutely has to drive an entire industry into the ground for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, this video will do nothing to assuage the image of President Obama as an essentially anti-coal President who is using his EPA to try to strangle the industry – an image that has yielded political humiliation for the President in Appalachia, where coal is one of the leading sources of employment…
