Kerby Anderson

Here’s a question for you. What country is leading the world in reducing CO₂ emissions? Germany? France? Japan? No, the country reducing greenhouse gas emissions more than any other country is . . . the United States of America.

Your ability or inability to provide the right answer to that question probably says quite a bit about the news sources you consume. Much of the mainstream media made a big deal out of the fact that the US withdrew from the Paris Accords. And they continuously reminded us that the US never signed the Kyoto Protocol. What they rarely (if ever) told us is the US is reducing CO₂ emissions.

Here’s another question for you. What country leads the world in total CO₂ emissions? If you guessed the United States, once again you would be wrong. China is the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, and India is the third largest emitter.

I bring this up because it also shows the problem of trying to curb the United States when we don’t have the ability to curb other nations. For every ton of reduced CO₂ emissions in the US, China and India produce nearly 10 more tons. In other words, they cancel out any reduction by the US by ten times.

The solution being proposed in the Green New Deal would be to force the US to reduce CO₂ emissions to the point that the country might be carbon neutral. That is not possible. But even if it was possible, the climate sensitivity models predict it would only affect the world temperature by about 0.137 degree Celsius by 2100. Even if all the countries adopted a similar policy, it would only cool the earth by about 0.278 degree Celsius by the end of this century.

I believe some of these important political and scientific facts deserve to be publicized while we are currently debating domestic environmental policies.

Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC/GMAO