Once more, science provides bad news for global warming alarmists. U.S.
CO2 levels again declined during 2017, despite overall global output
again rising. Credit U.S. fracking and the natural gas boom. But don't
worry: the hysteria won't end.
The new report, based on U.S. data, shows clearly the U.S. continuing downward trend.
"The U.S. emitted 15.6 metric tons of CO2 per person in 1950," wrote the Daily Caller.
"After rising for decades, it's declined in recent years to 15.8 metric
tons per person in 2017, the lowest measured levels in 67 years."
That's right. 67 years. Green groups and leftist climate extremists
should be exulting. The U.S. has found a way to produce more GDP —
making all of us better off — with less energy.
Meanwhile, Europe has imposed massive economy-deadening regulations
on its economies in order to reduce CO2 output. How has that worked?
Last year, European output of CO2 rose 1.5%, while U.S. output fell 0.5%. For the record, the disaster predicted when President Trump left the Paris climate agreement and rejected draconian EPA restrictions on power plants hasn't materialized. On the contrary, the U.S. model has been shown to be superior.
...The U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest energy report
notes that, from 2005 to 2017, U.S. energy related emissions of carbon
dioxide plunged by 861 million metric tons, a 14% drop. It's both a
result of the decline due to the Great Recession and the fracking
revolution.
The EIA forecast expects a slight uptick over the next two years in
the U.S. as the economy continues its Trump boom. But it will still be
way below where it was 13 years ago.
Question: Over the same period, how did the rest of the world do? Emissions rose by 21%
to 6.04 billion metric tons over the 12 years, mostly due to booming
economic growth in India and China, where coal-fired energy output
continues to expand.
The truth, and it's proven by the hard data, is that CO2 made in the
USA will not choke the world to death or cause it to massively overheat.
And you can thank capitalism for that.
Because capitalism, unlike socialism and its welfare-state kin, hates
waste. So it does all it can to be efficient. That means using as
little energy as possible to make things. And this predates any of the
current CO2 hysteria.
In the U.S., the data are clear and utterly convincing: In 1949, it
took 1,098 metric tons of CO2 emissions to produce $1 million in GDP in
the U.S., after adjusting for inflation. Today, it takes just 301 metric
tons to produce that same million dollars, after inflation — a 73% gain
in carbon-efficiency.
Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
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