Obama's first term had a very low average carbon impact because there was a global depression. During depressions, emissions always drop because of less economic activity. Capitalism literally killing the earth, but w/e.
You're right, and the economic boom under Trump boosted his carbon emission for a year. Unfortunately, both presidents have been entirely coasting on emissions reductions that were from transition to natural gas. Liberal publications were actually ridiculing Trump not that long ago for his failure to "revitalize coal", because the industry has just been moving to natural gas for years due to cost savings and aging coal plants. The trend is expected to continue up to like, 2030. I remember reading some report back in Obama's second term that remarked that the emissions targets of his Clean Power Plan were a virtual match to the trend the energy market was already on. As far as I know the CPP was his signature executive policy, and the Climate Action Plan was his broader wish list of policies (he failed to ever pass a climate bill, which Hillary mentioned in her campaign as a reason for not pursuing a bill to enact her policy. She was going to attempt to make it all executive policy. Biden claims he is going to pass a bill, which I can guarantee you is not going to happen unless the bill is an abortion). It also took him his ENTIRE TERM to even finalize the CPP, which as I said was tantamount to doing nothing, allowing the market for natural gas to replace coal and taking some vague credit for it.
According to projections I saw of if the Climate Action Plan had actually been implemented, which did have more substantial initiatives to actively pursue emissions targets, we'd be sitting around where Trump is heading now due to COVID, at least if the assumptions in those analyses hold. This is simply because of the economic depression we entered when everything started shutting down. So we are in Obama's dream zone right now, something he was generally commended for promoting but never doing, and now it is treated as though it is a sure-fire path to nuclear apocalypse. I don't even deny it is a path to disaster, I just get a fucking headache when I see people acting like Trump is the most dangerous US president on climate when he has barely done anything. He mostly sat there with his thumb up his ass, and we are sailing to the promised land of the Climate Action Plan. I feel like that fact is more significant than the fact that Trump is an aggressive dipshit.
Obama's first term had a very low average carbon impact because there was a global depression. During depressions, emissions always drop because of less economic activity. Capitalism literally killing the earth, but w/e.
You're right, and the economic boom under Trump boosted his carbon emission for a year. Unfortunately, both presidents have been entirely coasting on emissions reductions that were from transition to natural gas. Liberal publications were actually ridiculing Trump not that long ago for his failure to "revitalize coal", because the industry has just been moving to natural gas for years due to cost savings and aging coal plants. The trend is expected to continue up to like, 2030. I remember reading some report back in Obama's second term that remarked that the emissions targets of his Clean Power Plan were a virtual match to the trend the energy market was already on. As far as I know the CPP was his signature executive policy, and the Climate Action Plan was his broader wish list of policies (he failed to ever pass a climate bill, which Hillary mentioned in her campaign as a reason for not pursuing a bill to enact her policy. She was going to attempt to make it all executive policy. Biden claims he is going to pass a bill, which I can guarantee you is not going to happen unless the bill is an abortion). It also took him his ENTIRE TERM to even finalize the CPP, which as I said was tantamount to doing nothing, allowing the market for natural gas to replace coal and taking some vague credit for it.
According to projections I saw of if the Climate Action Plan had actually been implemented, which did have more substantial initiatives to actively pursue emissions targets, we'd be sitting around where Trump is heading now due to COVID, at least if the assumptions in those analyses hold. This is simply because of the economic depression we entered when everything started shutting down. So we are in Obama's dream zone right now, something he was generally commended for promoting but never doing, and now it is treated as though it is a sure-fire path to nuclear apocalypse. I don't even deny it is a path to disaster, I just get a fucking headache when I see people acting like Trump is the most dangerous US president on climate when he has barely done anything. He mostly sat there with his thumb up his ass, and we are sailing to the promised land of the Climate Action Plan. I feel like that fact is more significant than the fact that Trump is an aggressive dipshit.