For about two decades now the liberal media have been blaring the warning sirens about global warming and calling for greater government regulation and taxation to stop it. On April 18, Russell Gold of the Wall Street Journal gave readers an excellent front-page article exploring how U.S. carbon emissions have decreased in the past few years, not thanks to government action but the power of the free market. It's expanded natural gas exploration -- something that drives the environmentalist Left batty, by the way -- which is the chief culprit for reduced emissions.
Energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that Is widely believed to contribute to global warming, have fallen 12% between 2005 and 2012 and are at their lowest level since 1994, according to a recent estimate by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Energy Department.
While other factors, including a sluggish U.S. economy and increasing energy efficiency, have contributed to the decline in carbon emissions from factories, automobiles and power plants, many experts believe the switch from coal to natural gas for electricity generation has been the biggest factor. Carbon-dioxide emissions account for nearly 84% of greenhouse-gas emissions, while methane—the main ingredient in natural gas—makes up 8.8%, according to a recent Environmental Protection Agency report.
What's more, on the forty year anniversay of Earth Day in 2010, it showed that air quality has never been better, even as we're at the most industrialized we've ever been as a global economy.
Nevertheless, as enviromentalists decry our carbon footprint in the U.S., they don't seem as vociferous in China's astronomical use of coal, and their exemption from the Kyoto Protocol.
