Natural gas expansion

Climate change is still being infected with politics instead of science and economics. The upcoming Paris meeting is a case in point. This agreement states: The Paris Agreement requires all Parties to put forward their best efforts through “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) and to strengthen these efforts in the years ahead. For China and India the world’s two biggest producers of CO2 this means push ahead with building coal plants and offer reductions only many years in the future. Their feeling is that the Western countries went through the industrial revolution using coal and they are just catching up and have the right to do so. To sign this agreement means nothing accept it looks good politically. The US can best do its part by continuing to replace coal fired plant with natural gas. Here are two results of the US efforts in this area. The first is that carbon dioxide emission growth seems to be slowing. 2015 marked the 2nd straight year that the increase in emissions was smaller than the year before But the second positive note in the numbers is that the U.S. continues to lead the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2015, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell by 145 million tons, by far the largest decline of any country in the world. The next step for the US is to move the transportation industry over to natural gas, something that should have started years ago but politics is in the way. Step two, the recent agreement of China to buy natural gas from the US will make a profound difference and should be expanded to India.