Good News: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low

[Willinois]

AP IMPACT: CO2 emissions in US drop to 20-year low

Quote:In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the U.S. has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.

Many of the world's leading climate scientists didn't see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

Quote:How much further the shift from coal to natural gas can go is unclear. Bentek says that power companies plan to retire 175 coal-fired plants over the next five years. That could bring coal's CO2 emissions down to 1980 levels. However, the EIA predicts prices of natural gas will start to rise a bit next year, and then more about eight years from now.

The downside is that cheap natural gas is also making it less profitable to build renewable energy. We have to make sure that the US doesn't simply go back to coal when the price of natural gas goes up again.
That means:
1) Keep building as much clean energy as we can as quickly as we can.
2) Shut down the older, high polluting coal plants now so that they don't go back into use.

This makes the wind energy tax credit that's about to expire even more important.

[There Is No Spoon]

I had to read this story after seeing in on our Twitter feed.

Certainly a good counter to those coal-loving neanderthal conservatives that say Obama is anti-coal. I hope they do indeed continue to retire coal plants while natural gas is still cheap.

[jaxx]

Willard is out there pushing clean coal. He even stood in front of a bunch of miners to do so.....funny he didn't mention the horrors the owners get by with when it comes to safety for those miners. That's another subject.

Glad to hear the CO2 emissions have dropped. Obama will help protect the environment......Willard will pollute it so his rich buddies can get richer.

[Born_A_Truman]

Bill Maher had Peter Byck on Friday night talking about his movie "Carbon Nation" and about how grazing cattle and grasslands is a big solution.

Q) What was the most surprising fact you discovered while making Carbon Nation?

A) That if we stopped all carbon emissions today, we would still continue to heat up because we’ve already put too much CO2 into the atmosphere. 2) The only solid and rugged solution for this blew and continues to blow my mind, as more and more science and studies come in: that properly grazed cattle, basically like the buffalo were like before Europeans showed up in North America, huge herds, constantly moving so there’s no over grazing, pooping all along the way, will create the most robust grasslands – grasslands that in turn sequester huge, huge amounts of carbon. The grazing land in the U.S. alone would remove so much CO2 from the atmosphere, that we’d be able to slow down climate change. And organic farming does the same stuff – and manure added to organic farming makes it even more robust. Just using the earth’s 5 billion years of R&D. Stay tuned. This is some big stuff. Helps me sleep at night, I’ll tell you.

And this clip I found is great:

Carbon Nation clip: Department of Defense from Gravitas VOD on Vimeo.