I Wondered Why They Weren't Pounding the US
Usually an article like this would blame the US:
Global carbon dioxide emissions in 2008 rose 1.94 percent year-on-year to 31.5 billion tonnes, German renewable energy industry institute IWR said on Monday, based on official information and its own research.
Several other leftish / alarmist sites picked up the story, but still didn't hammer the US, saying only that the US is the largest contributor to total emissions but not whether it contributed significantly to last year's rise. It turns out there is a reason for this. US emissions were actually way down, falling far faster than the drop in economic growth: (from the EIA)
The story tries to put a positive spin on Europe (again, the preferred story line is always Europe-good-America-bad):
Carbon dioxide emissions from heavy industry participating in the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme fell 3.1 percent last year compared with 2007, the EU's executive Commission said in mid-May
This is a carefully worded cherry-picking on one sector of the economy. I would be willing to bet almost any amount of money that the rest of Europe's economy saw less of a drop or even an increase. Even so, the cherry-picked sector, the one subject to cap-and-trade, still underperformed the US. Overall, US emissions have fallen since 2000 without any real regulatory program and just the normal incentives of economic efficiency at work.
The US is NOT the problem when it comes to future emissions growth.
