Analysis: In 101 months, the U.S. will have achieved President Biden’s most important climate promise — or it will have fallen short. Right now it is seriously falling short.
. The stated reason for Manchin’s hesitation is raging inflation, a serious concern. But there is always a reason to delay action, and time is not forgiving when it comes to the warming climate., made in 2021, to slash U.S. emissions by 50 to 52 percent by the end of 2030 — 101 months from this August — against what they were in 2005.
“The current official U.S. targets are ambitious,” said John Sterman, an energy policy expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “They are also necessary to create a prosperous, healthy climate. And the policies that the administration had proposed — transportation, buildings, et cetera — had the potential to get us there.”“But with Senator Manchin’s position … we’re not going to be able to do that,” Sterman said.
In many ways, in fact, thinking we have until 2030 to cut emissions to the target dramatically overstates how much time there actually is. As more time elapses, the amount of emissions that need to be cut grows greater in the remaining months. It is like a ship taking on water — if you wait to start baling, you have to bale ever faster, and if you wait long enough, at some point you no longer have a chance to reach shore.
The Biden goal was already a major reach. So far, the United States has only shaved emissions by a sliver of what the administration intends. Emissions in 2005 were 6.6 billion tons of greenhouse gases, and emissions in 2019 and 2020 were 5.8 and 5.2 billion tons, respectively, according to official national figures.Thus, current cuts from 2005 levels amount to either 12 or 21 percent, depending on whether you use emissions figures for 2020 .
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