President Trump must be laughing until his sides hurt.
New reports show that greenhouse gas emissions are plunging in the United States and rising in Europe—and the drop in the U.S. is due to falling costs of renewable energy and natural gas.
As Tony Mecia writes for The Weekly Standard:
A report released last week by the Rhodium Group says that even though Trump “continues to unravel Obama-era climate and clean energy policies,” falling costs of renewable energy and natural gas are “keeping U.S. greenhouse gas emissions on the downswing.” The latest government data show emissions have fallen 12 percent from 2005 to 2016. The Rhodium Group report estimates that by 2020, emissions will have fallen between 15 percent and 17 percent compared with 2005 levels.
Mecia also notes a June estimate by BP claiming U.S. carbon dioxide emissions in 2017 fell by 42 million tons compared with 2017, the largest plunge of any country. That same BP estimate showed Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions climbing 92 million tons.
The European statistics body Eurostat reported in May that European Union carbon emissions grew 1.8%. Eurostat wrote, “Italy and France both posted a 3.2 percent rise, increasing their share of emissions to 10.7 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The highest increases were for Malta, which went up 12.8 percent, Estonia, with 11.3 percent, and Bulgaria, with 8.3 percent … Arguably one of the biggest carbon culprits in 2017 was Spain, which saw emissions levels going up by 7.4 percent to take a 7.7 percent share of all the carbon dioxide in the EU.
China, the world’s biggest polluter, saw its greenhouse emissions climb 3.4%.
