3 thoughts on “US carbon emissions fall to lowest levels since 1994”
I live in Billings and some of my work is related tangentially to the Bakken oil play. My dad was one (among many) of the developers of the directional drilling technology, although I don’t think he was in on the fracking process. I have lots of reasons to be grateful to the energy industry — as do all Americans.
That’s not an “or” question.
No, it’s a “both/and” question. Clearly natural gas has much less carbon per unit of energy than other fuels. The fracking miracle that has flooded the U.S. with new supplies of natural gas has lowered prices and that has pushed aside other energy sources that are now relatively more expensive.
There has been a long term trend for the U.S. to require less and less energy (from many sources) for each dollar of GDP — but the extremely slow recovery from the Great Recession (and the negative growth of the most recent quarter) reflect the negative Obama economic policies that are and will continue to keep the brakes on economic growth until better policies are established.
Of course, the CO2 aspect is simply meaningless, since human activities appear to have no significant impact on “climate change.”
That’s not an “or” question.
Natural gas burns with very little carbon dioxide compared to coal or petroleum, so switching to it will reduce CO2, which is meaningless anyway.
The energy needs of the US are probably close to leveling off if our population continues to level off. We may use energy in different combinations but most people are probably using nearly all the energy they’d be likely to use if it were much less expensive than it is.
But the drop in economic activity also reduces energy use and that’s a bad marker for well-being.
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I live in Billings and some of my work is related tangentially to the Bakken oil play. My dad was one (among many) of the developers of the directional drilling technology, although I don’t think he was in on the fracking process. I have lots of reasons to be grateful to the energy industry — as do all Americans.
That’s not an “or” question.
No, it’s a “both/and” question. Clearly natural gas has much less carbon per unit of energy than other fuels. The fracking miracle that has flooded the U.S. with new supplies of natural gas has lowered prices and that has pushed aside other energy sources that are now relatively more expensive.
There has been a long term trend for the U.S. to require less and less energy (from many sources) for each dollar of GDP — but the extremely slow recovery from the Great Recession (and the negative growth of the most recent quarter) reflect the negative Obama economic policies that are and will continue to keep the brakes on economic growth until better policies are established.
Of course, the CO2 aspect is simply meaningless, since human activities appear to have no significant impact on “climate change.”
That’s not an “or” question.
Natural gas burns with very little carbon dioxide compared to coal or petroleum, so switching to it will reduce CO2, which is meaningless anyway.
The energy needs of the US are probably close to leveling off if our population continues to level off. We may use energy in different combinations but most people are probably using nearly all the energy they’d be likely to use if it were much less expensive than it is.
But the drop in economic activity also reduces energy use and that’s a bad marker for well-being.