This morning I was listening to a podcast of Left, Right and Center and I heard the guy on the right (guest commentator Clarke Judge of the White House Writers Group) talking about how well the US has done in limiting our greenhouse gases. He even claimed that we had outperformed the EU in that realm. I was dumbfounded. How is that possible?, I thought. We have done nothing. Sure, some of us drive hybrids, but that can’t be it. In Europe, they ride bikes… they take public transportation… they carpool. Heck, they don’t know what an SUV is. Plus, like the neocons with stock in Nukes want for us, they have nukes over there, thereby producing no greenhouse gases. It didn’t add up.
Turns out it didn’t add up. In fact, Bush is cherry-picking data and making it seem that we are doing well. Turns out that if you look at all of the greenhouse gases, from the agreed upon base year (1990), we suck. Worse, these wingnut-o-sphere talking points will continue to be perpetrated by the Republican noise machine. The excellent analysis will be a useful tool for debunking this particular line of BS. Keep in mind that one of the reasons that our CO2 levels were curbed in 2001 is because our economy was ransacked and our planes were grounded after 9/11. Even when we were flying again, we had reduced our air travel. This is why they make me sick.