After three years of decline, climate change causing carbon dioxide emissions rose sharply in the US last year according to new research.
Carbon emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018 marking the second largest annual gain in more than two decades, according to preliminary power generation data analyzed by the Rhodium Group, an independent economic policy research provider.
This follows a Global Carbon Project report in December that said global carbon emissions were estimated to rise by 2.7% for all 2018.
The new research indicated that US power sector emissions as a whole rose by 1.9%. and that the transportation sector “held its title as the largest source of US emissions for the third year running,” due to a growth in demand for diesel and jet fuel offsetting a modest decline in gasoline use.
The construction and industry sectors also saw sizable emission increases.
The authors of the research say the increase highlights the lack of strategy in the country’s decarbozation efforts and that the existing gap in meeting the goal set in the Paris Agreement would become wider in 2019.
The Trump administration has at times denied the basic science of climate change, which states that burning coal, oil and natural gas produces emissions that trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet. But it has become increasingly clear that warming is happening faster than previously thought and with worse results.
In November, the administration released its fourth national climate assessmentoutlining the dire environmental and economic impacts of climate change, stating that thousands of Americans could die and gross domestic product could take a 10% hit by century’s end.
President Donald Trump, who previously has called climate change a “hoax,” has rejected the report’s conclusion that climate change could be devastating for the economy, saying “I don’t believe it.”
His Administration has since made a series of policy and diplomatic decisions or statements that appear torun counter to all of the warnings in the report. None are designed to reduce fossil fuel emissions, which the report said is needed to combat extreme climate change.
In December, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed relaxing regulations for newly-built coal-fueled power plants, which , combined with another proposal to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, would overhaul the way coal-fired plants are built and regulated.
The move sent a political signal that the Trump administration is intent on shoring up the coal industry and other energy interests and environmentalists worry the proposed rule suggests the EPA will set new standards that would weaken the requirements that the agency uses to regulate other types of pollution.
At the G20 meeting in Argentina, which came just days after the release of that dire climate report, US diplomats insisted on noting that the US reaffirmed its intention to withdraw from the Paris accord.
When the US Geological Survey announced a major discovery of oil and natural gas underneath Texas and New Mexico in December, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke called it a gift.
The Interior Department then proposed to cut protections that benefited the sage grouse, a grassland bird that lives in the Great Plains and western states, which could allow for expanded oil and drilling. The plan would remove protections on nearly 9 million acres of protected habitat.
