On Climate Change: Obama Wants To Save A World That Doesn't Want To Be Saved

Next week, Obama plans to announce a slew of new EPA regulations that are intended to dramatically reduce carbon emissions; and, as promised, he is going it alone because Congress won't act.  As a result, every American is going to see their energy bills increase and products that heavily depend on electrical energy for their creation will begin to cost us more.  This at a time when we are in the midst of one of the worst economic recoveries in the history of the U.S..

What the President doesn't seem to understand is that, while we are cutting CO2 emissions, the rest of the world isn't.  Further, there is a complete disconnect from increased CO2 levels causing increased global warming. Proof of this comes from just four charts.

The first shows how dramatically the U.S. has cut its overall emissions despite not signing the Kyoto Treaty or implementing a Carbon Tax:

Those results are more significant when you look at CO2 emission on a per capita basis:

This chart shows that the current per-person footprint of the average American is equal to that of 1964; and, if the decline continues as projected, we should go below 1950's levels by 2040.

So, one would think that with all the CO2 reductions by the United States -- the country that uses 25% of all the world's oil -- there would be a significant drop in global levels.  But, that is simply not true.  Instead global CO2 emissions have continued to rise at a steady rate of about 2% per year:

The fact is that we are beating ourselves up trying to save the world from increasing CO2 levels when, in fact, the world doesn't seem to want to save itself.  For every ton of CO2 that we eliminate, the world just keeps adding additional tons that more than offset that gain. More importantly, despite the consistent rise in CO2 levels, the earth has stopped warming for the last 18 years.

The only reason Obama is rolling out these new restrictions is because this is his 5th year in office. He  needs his political base to come out in droves to vote in the fall. In his first two years in office, he could have easily done something because he had both Houses of Congress in his back pocket.  Yet, only now has he decided to act because our "mixed" Congress (a Congress of supposed inaction) is forcing him to go it alone.  I personally hope Americans come out in droves to throw the Democrats out of office and use a solidly Republican House and Senate as a hammer to stop this President and his lawless and economy killing actions.


References:

Obama to unveil historic climate change plan to cut US carbon pollution: Proposed regulations could cut carbon pollution by up to 25%: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/29/obama-unveil-historic-climate-plan-carbon-pollution

No global warming for 17 years 8 months: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/05/no-global-warming-for-17-years-8-months/