The Free-Market Works: CO2 Emissions At 20-Year Low

Earlier this month, I wrote a post, Liberal Stupidity: Fighting Coal and Fracking At The Same Time, where I argued that the process of fracking to extract natural gas was doing more to reduce dirty coal emissions than any planned government regulation.

Today, the theory, as expressed in that post, was proven to be true.  In a report released by the Department of Energy, CO2 emissions in the United States are now at a 20-year low.  Not because of Obama or his EPA or wind or solar but, because of fracking.  Fracking has made natural gas prices so low that power producers are switching over from coal at a rapid rate.  There is a profit motive; driven by our free-market system, but, at the same time, liberal environmentalists should be rejoicing because the burning of natural gas to produce electricity versus coal cuts CO2 emissions in half.

In the Associated Press article that was the basis of this blog entry (AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low), the writer said this:

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

Sadly, this news didn't get much press because the left and left-wing media don't want natural gas to be a success story.  After all, natural gas still produces CO2 and, in the extreme mind of the environmentalist, any CO2 is intolerable; even though each one of those environmentalists produce CO2 every time they exhale.