Globally, the struggle to reduce carbon emissions isn’t working. Every decrease in the United States and Europe is more than matched by increases in China and India. I found Brad Plumer’s New York Times article on that interesting but this passage caught my attention:
In the United States, carbon dioxide emissions are on track to fall roughly 1.7 percent in 2019, thanks to a sharp decline in coal-fired electricity. Still, this year’s drop in United States emissions isn’t expected to be enough to offset the 2.8 percent increase in 2018, suggesting that the country is struggling to control emissions at a time when the Trump administration has moved to roll back Obama-era regulations on carbon pollution from vehicle tailpipes and power-plant smokestacks.
The European Union’s emissions are also on track to fall 1.7 percent this year as the continent’s emissions-trading system helped push roughly one-fifth of its coal power off the grid. At the same time, Europe also saw an increase in demand for diesel and aviation fuel, indicating that policymakers are failing to curtail emissions from cars, trucks and planes even as they lay out big plans to promote electric vehicles.
There’s something wrong with that passage and I can’t quite put my finger on what.
The figures on China’s increases in carbon omissions (26% of the total, growing at .9% per year compared with the U. S.’s 14%, declining at 1.7% per year) understate China’s exacerbation of whatever problem carbon emissions pose. China isn’t just promoting increased emissions at home. It’s doing so abroad as well, 300 coal plants in Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.
