Anything the US does to reduce its “carbon footprint” will be overwhelmed by what China and the rest of the world are doing to increase theirs. The claimed benefits rest on the dubious assumption that hurricanes and wildfires over the last few years wouldn’t have happened if only we had further curbed greenhouse gas emissions. From Mish Shedlock at thestreet.com:
Kerry’s Comments
- “There are countless economic analyses now that show it’s now cheaper to deal with the crisis of climate than it is to ignore it.”
- “We spent $265 billion 2 years ago on 3 storms, Irma, Harvey, and Maria. Maria destroyed Puerto Rico. Harvey dropped more water on Houston in five days than goes over Niagara Falls in a year. And Irma had the first recorded winds of 185 miles an hour for 24 sustained hours.”
- “All of them were exacerbated by the last four years. Now we have to try to make up for that. That is a hard pull but this president is capable of doing it.”
Straw Man Fallacies
Implied in Kerry’s straw man analysis is implicit belief that addressing “climate change” would have prevented Irma, Harvey, Maria, and the wildfires in California.
Where is the CO2 coming from?
CO2 Stats
- Please note that the US reduced its carbon footprint from 6.13 billion tons in 2007 to 5.28 billion tons in 2019.
- Meanwhile, China increased its footprint from 6.86 billion tons in 2019 to 10.17 billion tons in 2019.
- In the same timeframe, global output rose from 31.29 billion tons to 36.44 billion tons.
- In 2007, the US accounted for 19.6% of the total global carbon footprint.
- In 2019, the US accounted for only 14.5% of the total global footprint.
The above stats are from Our World CO2 Emissions.
