Per Barbara Boxer’s flippant suggestion that the US should “reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050,” fellow Planet blogger Jim Manzi asks: “Is it conceivable that she’s even thought through the economic implications of this?” Obviously she hasn’t, but Americans should. Here they are:
Since the Great Depression, according to the Department of Energy, CO2 emissions have dropped only twice – during the recessions of 1981-82 and 1990-91. The 1981-82 recession, the deepest since the 1930s, reduced CO2 emissions by 8 percent.
Celebrating the Kyoto treaty signing in 1997, Boxer’s fellow traveler Gore proudly announced that the United States would slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 7 percent below 1990 levels (in order to prevent what Gore then described as an ‘environmental holocaust’). What he didn’t say was that the Clinton administration had already quietly reneged on its 1993 commitment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.
All told, under the “It’s the economy stupid” Clinton/Gore Administration, emissions increased nearly 12 percent.