Democrats and a climate-change dilemma

CLIMATE POLICY in America has always been an up-and-down affair. But few reversals have been as dramatic as the replacement of Barack Obama with Donald Trump. Unlike his predecessor, the current president is sceptical about climate change and loves “beautiful, clean” coal. The environmental agencies are stocked with former lobbyists for coal, fracking and chemicals companies. And yet according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in America dropped by 2.7% in his first year of office. This was the biggest reduction anywhere in the rich world.

Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist who now heads the EPA, has been quick to praise “President Trump’s regulatory reform agenda” for this. In fact, the decline has little to do with the president’s policies. America’s carbon dioxide emissions have been on a downward trajectory since 2007, mostly because power plants have been switching to cheaper, cleaner natural gas and away from Mr Trump’s beloved rock. According to the Energy Information Administration, a government agency, America guzzled nearly equal quantities of coal and natural gas in 2007. Today natural gas provides twice as much energy as coal. Energy from renewable sources, like wind and solar, now make up just over 10% of America’s energy consumption.