In 2017, US had largest decline in CO2 emissions

https://www.aei.org/publication/chart-of-the-day-in-2017-us-had-largest-decline-in-co2-emissions-in-the-world-for-9th-time-this-century/

by prostoalex • 8 years ago

139 105 8 years ago

aei.org

guitarbill• 8 years ago

Based on a BP study, the US had the "largest decline" of CO2 emissions in 2017, where largest decline is in absolute terms for that period only, not in relative terms.

acqq• 8 years ago

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/global-warming/climate-denier...

“American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has a long track record of distorting the science and solutions of climate change. Its arguments tend to de-emphasize the environmental and economic risks of climate change, exaggerate the costs of addressing the problem and question the value of putting a policy in place at all.”

Now they, not surprisingly, intentionally confuse the readers using only the numbers that support their agenda.

akuji1993• 8 years ago

I don't trust any statistic I haven't faked myself.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

BP == British Petro?

If so, it's in their best interest to always conclude 'nothing to see here, move along' when it comes to pollution/environmental concerns... I would treat such a 'study' with the heavy skepticism it deserves.

It's like as if McDonalds had released a study saying that obesity in the US is on the decline.

jessaustin2• 8 years ago

...in the world for 9th time this century

That seems an important qualifier?

If we try a little harder next year, maybe our reduction will offset EU's increase... we got close this year.

icebraining2• 8 years ago

The EU increase was a fluke, caused by the drought in Spain, which forced them to compensate the poor hydro production with fossil fuels. But they are already committed to close down the coal plants by the end of next year, increasing solar and wind to compensate.

What the US should worry about is its CO2 emissions per capita, which are still 2x the EU's. Quite a way to go.

jessaustin2• 8 years ago

Yes the only way we would "catch up" from that perspective would be if Europe were to keep increasing its output, which is unlikely. But really this detail seems unimportant. We're back to 1992 levels, and there is still room for improvement. We'll be perfectly happy never catching up to Europe in this sense.

TheSpiceIsLife• 8 years ago

The EU increase was a fluke, caused by the drought in Spain

Drought, fluke?

I was of the understanding that longer more severe weather events are predicted by the climate models?

So rather than being a fluke isn't this directly caused by unmitigated greenhouse gas emissions?

gedy• 8 years ago

What the US should worry about is its CO2 emissions per capita

Climate change does not care about "per capita" or where it originates though, only absolute values. So any reduction in absolute terms is valuable

jcranmer2• 8 years ago

Dismissing it as a fluke is a bit short-sighted. The EU's problem with its energy policy is that it has often accidentally been regressive in terms of CO₂ emissions. Germany's decision to abandon its nuclear plants provided a sharp rise in emissions, for example, at a time when fracking in the US was causing coal plants to switch to natural gas in droves.

The US's emissions are still bad, in absolute, per capita, and per GDP terms. However, the trends are still on a downwards trend, and even the current administration's policies are unlikely to be able to change that. The country to be most concerned about is China, whose emissions are the largest in an absolute sense, and even on a per capita basis are about ½ the US's, and these numbers are on upwards trends.

keithnz• 8 years ago

From the article links, I think the overall emissions are probably the better thing to look at

https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-ec...

seems to show year after year, we keep increasing. Except 2009 ( I wonder if that was because of the fallout of the economic crash in 2008? )

Assuming all the warnings about climate change related to C02 emissions. Seems like we aren't going to be able to turn the ship before it is has a massive impact. My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel (Nuclear fusion? Awesome battery tech? )

Brakenshire• 8 years ago

The rest of the world will fund the technology and scale necessary, then in 10-15 years when renewables plus storage and electric cars are cheaper than the existing technology US Republicans will have a volte-face, deploy at scale, and claim they saved the world through unregulated capitalism. And the rest of the world won’t mind.

gonvaled5• 8 years ago

Let's hope we can put some steep fines on the US for inaction, or other penalties (tariffs in other products / technologies) to recoup those investments, done while the biggest polluter is refusing to take responsibility.

The ideal solution would be to tax exporting climate tech to the US, but the world wants a fast adoption of clean technologies, so we need to balance this unfair situation otherwise.

carry_bit• 8 years ago

My guess is nothing will change until we have some good alternatives to fossil fuel

Not even necessarily then. Fission is a good alternative, and it could've been massively deployed decades ago. (Just think of how many billions of tons of emissions could've been avoided.)

r00fus• 8 years ago

More on point... more radioactive material is released by coal emissions than by nuclear reactor waste output annually.

gascan3• 8 years ago

I'm a greenie, but I do figure natural gas could potentially be a stepping stone while we try to figure out the fossil fuel alternative. I don't see it as a long term solution, but at half the CO2 and much cleaner burning, it definitely seems like we should be scrapping coal as fast as we can- which could meaningfully decrease the US's total emissions.

Then, we figure out what to do next. We just need Zeno's Paradox working for us.

pitaj• 8 years ago

Nuclear please.

bouke• 8 years ago

There's lies, damned lies and statistics. I think it's very nice that percentage-wise an improvement has been made. However, when looking at the absolute numbers from a different perspective;

    US 5087M tonnes, 327M inhabitants -> ~15 tonnes/inhabitant
    EU 4152M tonnes, 511M inhabitants -> ~8 tonnes/inhabitant

Seems to me that the US still has a long way to go...

seltzered_• 8 years ago

Just a brief melange of twitter links, but worth noting that:

Global carbon emissions supposedly increased 1-3% for 2017: https://mobile.twitter.com/i/web/status/930027167689342976

And US EPA might’ve been underreporting some it’s methane emissions by 60% : https://mobile.twitter.com/chrfield/status/10153735848757289...

The US’s emission declines are decreasing due to economic / administration changes - from https://amp.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/limiting-g... - “News in recent days that the Trump administration plans to bolster the ailing US coal-fired power industry by intervening in markets would worsen the global emissions picture.

The CSIRO's Dr Canadell said while US carbon emissions had fallen for a decade, last year's decline will likely be much smaller because of quickening economic growth at home and abroad.”

moultano3• 8 years ago

Production creates emissions, not people. A more informative ratio is tons/GDP

US 5087M tons, $19.4 trillion GDP -> 262 tons/M$

EU 4152M tonnes, $17.1 trillion GDP -> 242 tons/M$

So still worse, but not as bad as that.

TheBeardKing• 8 years ago

Higher wealth is no excuse to produce higher emissions, if anything it should be the opposite - those with the wealth should use it to better control all negative externalities.

Retric2• 8 years ago

Banking does not create meaningful emissions. So emission vs GDP when ignoring imported goods is meaningless.

endorphone2• 8 years ago

Production creates emissions, not people

People most certainly create emissions, and manufacturing and construction accounts for just 20%.

AC, heated pools, cheap houses with little insulation, long commutes, SUVs, to the door delivery, etc.

pradn3• 8 years ago

Emissions vs people is a good metric if you think that every person should get an emissions budget. If pollution externalities are inevitable, it's most just to require that a Nepali and an American have the same emissions budget. Why does an American get to pollute way more?

lostmsu• 8 years ago

Just for fun, an average human produces ~0.35 tonnes of CO2 a year due to breathing. [0]

[0] http://www.sciencefocus.com/qa/how-much-does-human-breathing...

xefer• 8 years ago

How much of this drop is due to the US essentially "exporting" it's emissions?

The underlying data is specifically for "emissions from energy". The emissions created during the production of goods imported into the US are not captured here. Manufacturing that has been off-shored would look like a net positive in US emissions, but could actually result in higher world-wide emissions.

A better view would be “consumption-based emission inventories”

See section III.5 here:

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...

"... if we switched to a consumption-based reporting system (which corrects for this trade), in 2014 the annual CO2 emissions of many European economies would increase by more than 30% (the UK by 38%; Sweden by 66%; and Belgium's emissions would nearly double); and the USA's emissions would increase by 7%. On the other hand, China's emissions would decrease by 13%; India's by 9%; Russia's by 14% and South Africa by 29%."

vixen99• 8 years ago

its emissions

CompelTechnic• 8 years ago

The year-over-year change in consumption-based emission inventories probably does not deviate enough from the trend in emissions from energy to make a huge change.

mc322• 8 years ago

The US would still be the right direction and China and Russia would still be in the wrong direction of the trend.

tzs2• 8 years ago

Russia: yes.

China: not so clear.

As far as climate goes, what matters is the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The amount in the atmosphere is a function of the history of emissions, not just a function of recent emissions. Here's a chart showing cumulative CO2 emissions 1900-2002: https://timeforchange.org/cumulative-co2-emissions-by-countr...

If we were to figure out that total maximum acceptable CO2 in the atmosphere to keep the climate from warming to much, and divvy that up between countries based on nearly any fair allocation method, how much of their quota each country was using would be something like this:

  700% US
  650% Germany
  600% UK
  470% Canada
  450% Russia
  320% France
  260% Japan
  220% Italy
   30% China
   12% India

One could make a decent case that as long as a country is below 100%, it is OK for it to choose growth and development even though that increases emissions.

I believe that this is why most international climate agreements include aid for developing countries. We recognize that even if they put extraordinary effort into it the US, Germany, Russia, etc., would not be able to get down to 100% until long after it was too late, and so we need to convince developing countries to agree to stay well below their fair 100%.

But the way a country normally goes from developing to developed is by exploiting cheap, but environmentally unfriendly, resources. It is only after a country becomes a rich, developed, country that it can afford to exploit clean but expensive technology. If we just ask the developing countries to stay well below their fair 100%, we are in effect asking them to stay poor. They are not going to agree to that.

Hence, developed countries need to pay to build up developing countries to the point where developing countries can become developed countries without needing to exploit cheap but dirty technology.

o0-0o• 8 years ago

Before I even looked at this, I just knew commie china would be leading the offenders. Too bad we couldnt just install a big dome over them and see what happens.

taobility• 8 years ago

Very funny statement. Why US is in right direction? Do you know the absolute volume of how much US produced CO2 emissions in 2017, and compared with other countries?

endorphone2• 8 years ago

"A better view would be “consumption-based emission inventories”"

That's a different view, to pursue a different agenda, and is certainly not a better view.

When every greenhouse gas emission argument boils down to "Why the US/The West is to blame for everything", it turns the whole discussion into anti-science farce.

hangonhn• 8 years ago

But the science of emissions is considered solid among sane people and not a point of contention. It's the economics of emissions that people debate over. So wouldn't it make sense to take on the more economic/political view of the problem ?

eli_gottlieb2• 8 years ago

Read the numbers! The point is not who is "to blame" for everything, but to measure how the emission-generating supply chains are coupled to consumer demands. The point is that while we only regulate CO2 emissions at the nation-state level, we only generate an incentive to outsource your heavy industries elsewhere (generating the same or greater emissions) and then ship the resulting finished goods over longer distances, adding more carbon.

We need to decrease net global CO2 emissions to zero, and then further into the negatives. Period. Do-or-die. Everything else is a plutocrat's distraction.

tyu100• 8 years ago

Very little. As described in the research (and this is not novel), cheap natural gas from fracking has hugely displaced coal as a domestic power source.

ychen306• 8 years ago

Did the research account for the leak resulted from fracking? This is good news regardless.

tomp3• 8 years ago

The source is fishy.

The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known simply as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is a conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C.
AEI had sent letters to scientists offering $10,000 plus travel expenses and additional payments, asking them to critique the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report.[142] This offer was criticized as bribery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

acheron• 8 years ago

If you have a problem with the study or methodology, let’s hear it; otherwise, ad hominem attacks don’t add anything to the conversation.

tomp3• 8 years ago

I don't have the required knowledge to form an opinion on the data or methodology, or even on another expert's opinion on those.

But I find it hard to trust the untrustworthy. Personally, I would have appreciated if the title included ", claims an organisation that used to bribe scientists".

In addition, the title is essentially clickbait, a spin on the data that's convenient for the publisher; as other commenters noted, a large absolute decrease of a really large number is still a small relative decrease; and US is still one of the most per capita polluting countries.

I don't want to sound too negative though, I definitely hope the trend continues.

cthalupa• 8 years ago

It is not an ad hominem attack to point out that the source of the information has previously shown to be biased and use monetary incentives to garner outcomes that fit their viewpoints.

devy• 8 years ago

The moment AEI is advocating Natural Gas (a fossil fuel, FYI) and "advanced drilling" technologies, you know they are onto something and it's increasingly clear to the public that methane leaks and the 100x potency as a greenhouse gas is making it a non-option as renewal energy source.

Also, quoting BP, one of the big three oil companies, as the data source for CO2 report is like quoting Philip Morris's research on how smoking affects lung cancer, or quoting Monsanto for resarch on how RoundUp affects human digestive system. You get the idea.

andrewla2• 8 years ago

I think it's reasonable to be dubious given the source, and for that to be the default position until there is confirmation from other independent sources. That is, it may not be worth the time necessary to figure out whether the results hold up given that there is a prior likelihood of the source intentionally cherry-picking data on one end of the statistical spectrum that supports their agenda.

I mention in a comment above that the underlying source for the data is BP [1], which is also a little suspect, and their description of the methodology [2] is way too slim to be useful for a critique or confirmation of their results.

[1] https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

[2] https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-ec...

orblivion• 8 years ago

If we knew everything about how all this was conducted, and had time to understand it all, I would agree.

Or alternately, if this were a logical argument that could be completely divorced from who was saying it, it would be an Ad Hominem fallacy.

But as it stands, when it comes to gathering facts, trust and reputation of the people we're hearing the facts from is paramount. As such Ad Hominem, as it were, is valid.

I'm actually right-of-center myself. I'm scrolling through HN comments here to see what critiques people have of the organization, since I heard they are a right-of-center group and this finding is good for the right-of-center case. (So far they seem okay)

DanCarvajal• 8 years ago

AEI is basically on the same level with Brookings Institution, both have their ideological leanings but neither do necessarily bad work as a degree of policy is always about interpretation and argument on priorities.

An example of more ideologically bent DC think thanks would be Heritage Foundation and Competitive Enterprise Institute on the right, and Center for American Progress, and Center for Budget and Policy Priorities on the left.

forapurpose• 8 years ago

AEI is basically on the same level with Brookings Institution, both have their ideological leanings but neither do necessarily bad work as a degree of policy is always about interpretation and argument on priorities.

That is incorrect, as far as I know. AEI exists to provide intellectual support to the desired policies of certain conservative groups, such as neocons[0] and the fossil fuel industry. AEI has long been a source of fossil fuel industry arguments against climate change action, for example[1]; you can predict AEI's 'research' conclusions on any issue based on the politics. Brookings is an independent research organization, non-partisan, and the world's most respected think tank by some measures.[2]

Of course Brookings has some biases and failings, but a false equivalency that says 'everyone has biases' is simply not the truth. Everyone is a liar, but some people are far more trustworthy than others; all code has bugs, but it's not all of equal quality.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=neocons+site:aei.org

[1] https://www.aei.org/tag/climate-change/

[2] Look up the University of Pennsylvania's think tank survey; as of a couple years ago, Brookings was #1 (I don't have time to look myself right now; sorry!).

andrewla2• 8 years ago

I agree that this organization pushing the data makes it suspect, in the sense that given finite time resource I'd probably not bother to review this study for methodological consistencies and instead wait on confirmation or refutation from secondary sources.

It appears that they are just parroting back data from BP [1], which unfortunately just passes the buck to another organization with suspect motivations. Their methodology refers to the IPCC recommendations, so if followed should at least be consistent with other attempts to measure CO2 output, but without more detail of the inputs to the model it's difficult to be sure.

[1] https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/stat...

noetic_techy4• 8 years ago

Regardless of the source, its well known that natural gas and fracking is causing a huge emissions drop. This often flies in the face of peoples cognitive bias on the matter, and it should. Reconcile your "faith" with fact. Many can't except the reality that economic incentives vastly outway any government policy. CO2 emissions wont be solved by more regulations, they will be solved by transitioning our economy to cleaner sources, electric cars, lab grown meats, vertical farms, self driving electric planes, ships, trucks (think about the carbon loss of supporting a human operators. Truck stops go away, restaurants and hotels close, etc). The government would be better suited subsidizing or giving tax breaks to the technology we want to see roll out, or simply get out of the way all together, rather than silly ideas like carbon taxes and onerous regulations that just end up targeting the poorest blue collar workers.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

And all the "blue collar" workers at those hotels and truck stops? Dont assume that everyone supports driverless tech. Many regulations and taxation schemes do effectively protect the blues from the worst behaviors of the white-collared. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that all government is a conspiracy to keep you down. That belief, that a wild west dominated by tech companies can solve all problems, is the stuff of highschool economics papers and Marvel movies. Reality is never that simple.

imron• 8 years ago

And all the "blue collar" workers at those hotels and truck stops?

Don't worry, universal basic income will save them. /s

noetic_techy4• 8 years ago

There is a difference between jobs lost from automation and technological advancement, and jobs lost from pointless policy decisions.

I don't fall into any traps. I did say some gov subsidy MIGHT be beneficial in order to get technologies that are merely being held back by economies of scale to where they need to be faster. Hardcore libertarians freak at this as well, but I'm a bit more case by case. For example, subsidizing solar panel production until it reaches price parity with natural gas, then start scaling back the subsidy very slowly.

dangjc• 8 years ago

Carbon taxes are a very market oriented approach, not a silly idea.

Natural gas extraction and transmission turns out to emit more methane to the point of negating its lower CO2 emission benefits. https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-climate-activists-failed-...

sremani• 8 years ago

> https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-climate-activists-failed-....

Off the topic!

But here is the Author's bio on the article

--------------------------------------------------

Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an international environmental organization. His is the author of more than a dozen books about the environment, most recently Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist.

---------------------------------------------------

"His is the author of.." WTF Yale!

edit: Also as the author's profile reflect he is not a credible neutral authority! Visit the site 350.org, and see for yourself.

sandworm1012• 8 years ago

> a very market oriented approach, not a silly idea.

Market approached only make sense where they work. They quickly become silly when the market no longer supports the end goal. A dramatic reduction in the cost of some fossil fuels, which could happen should we all stop burning gas in our cars, may make any market approach seem very silly.

noetic_techy4• 8 years ago

I actually admit, after some digging, you may have a point here. My point was more about market solutions vs big government policy. Solar and Wind typically compete with natural gas for replacement of coal plants. I for one would prefer more solar. I think subsidies for the tech we want to see to reach scale and parity faster is a decent middle ground approach that acknowledges the market forces. The problem is we tend to rip that money away all at once, rather than scale it back VERY gradually.

adrianN2• 8 years ago

Natural gas and fracking also cause huge Methane leaks, so...

bad_user• 8 years ago

lab grown meats, vertical farms

Sorry to burst you bubble, but at least these two are a disaster for the environment and potentially for our health as well. And it’s pretty tragic how we tell ourselves fairytales in the face of evidence to the contrary.

noetic_techy4• 8 years ago

Got a source for these claims? Because I do:

https://www.new-harvest.org/environmental_impacts_of_culture...

"The paper predicted that, based on current published figures and research, complete replacement of conventional meat with cultured meat would result in an incredible 78-98% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, 99% reduction in land use and 82-96% reduction in water use,and 45% reduction in energy use."

Likelywise, vertical farms simply need green energy sources to achieve less of a footprint:

https://www.eater.com/2018/7/3/17531192/vertical-farming-agr...

"But Vosburg says the company’s priority is to use contextually appropriate renewable energy sources to power the farms, such as wind energy in the Midwest, hydro in the Northwest, and solar in the Southwest... “Yes, it sounds crazy to take the sun and turn it into electricity and turn that electricity back into light. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what we’ll be doing,” Vosburg says. “It’ll be really efficient and clean and create a better product, and it won’t have the same carbon impact that we’re having today.” ... And energy isn’t even a vertical farm’s top ongoing expense. The companies Civil Eats spoke to say labor is actually their largest budget item. Vertical farms typically pay workers higher, more metropolitan pay rates than both dirt farms—many of which rely heavily on migrant labor—and the more automated smart greenhouses. "

That all sounds like technical problems that can be solved with the right equipment, scale, and maybe some automation.

panzagl2• 8 years ago

It's amazing how commentators here just cannot accept the US as anything other than a source of evil. The US has been doing environmentalism since Europe was busy dividing up Africa.

gascan3• 8 years ago

I think people are just very on guard against oil & gas interests, which represent some of the biggest money in the country and indeed the world.

mc322• 8 years ago

At this point I though it would seem farcical, if the US in some alternate universe miraculously achieved zero net carbon emissions, people would come up and say well, the US isn’t doing enough, it’s not importing (subsidizing bad actors and taking their load from them) enough carbon to help carbon emitters come in line.

ben_w2• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, I have seen it suggested that net-zero is no longer sufficient; that the question has, for a while, been “how much damage will there be?” rather than “will there be any damage?”

Past emissions are still in the air.

I’m not too fussed myself, because I’ve noticed that photovoltaic is growing exponentially — literally exponentially — so we will probably soon have so much spare power we will be trivially able to absorb CO2 from the air and turn into petrol or something.

dmritard963• 8 years ago

Eh, the issue is not thay the US is good/bad whatever but this article frames most dialog on CO2 % change. There are a few issues:

C02 is only one greenhouse gas of which others, particularly methane from cow farts, are substabtial contributors to global warming. Americans love their red meat...

As absolute numbers, the US per capital contributions to global warming are crazy high.

If you integrated over time, the contribution of the US to global warming on a per capita basis since the industrial revolution, it is quite clear the US is an enormous driver of climate change.

panzagl2• 8 years ago

Addressing your points in order:

1) Which is why the US public throws its hand up on this crap- do well on one metric and suddenly another is more important. And let's add some extemporaneous moralizing in there- if it wasn't meat or cars it would be guns.

2) But not the highest.

3) A fabricated metric that conveniently excuses the actions of past pollution/emission champions (Europe) and the current champion (China) so the self-loathing can continue.

nikdaheratik• 8 years ago

So being skeptical of a report from a pro-fossil fuel conservative think tank based on data from an oil company is somehow the same as being anti-American?

Corporations <> America

Think Tanks with the word "American" in them != America

Skepticism of data that contradicts every trend we've seen in the past 20 years regarding CO2 emissions does not mean someone thinks America is "evil". Maybe you're the one with a not-so-hidden bias?

mrfusion• 8 years ago

How can we spin this a bit so the skeptics don’t run with this?

AndyMcConachie• 8 years ago

This is the American Enterprise Institute quoting a report from British Petroleum. I don't trust anything these people have to say about emissions. They lie too much on the subject.

In 2017, US had largest decline in CO2 emissions

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