03/19/2024

Fight against greenhouse gases stalls as emissions soar to new record

Progress in the fight against global warming has taken a big step backward, according to research published Wednesday, which projects greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels will hit a record high this year after a recent and promising lull.

And next year, emissions are expected to be even higher.

The research by the Global Carbon Project, with work out of Stanford University, blames the uptick on the explosive growth of the global economy. While many wealthy nations like the U.S. are turning to clean energy to spur the boom, they aren’t doing so quickly enough to make up for the dirty coal plants in India and China that continue to spew out pollution.

. . . This year will mark the first uptick in emissions in the U.S. since 2014. Despite efforts by the Trump administration to roll back climate regulations, however, the country is expected to see declining greenhouse gases next year. Federal deregulation has been slow to take hold while market forces are likely to continue pushing out coal in favor of wind and solar energy.

Worldwide, though, global emissions are forecast to continue rising in 2019, based on current trends, according to the report. The authors did not speculate by how much.

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