If you listen to the mainstream media, you probably think that the Bad Orange Man is boosting pollution and destroying the climate because we withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. (It’s not a “treaty” as defined in the United States because Congress never approved it.) The reality, however, is very different. The U.S. Energy Information Administration has quietly released yet another report saying that America once again reduced greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 and they project that such emissions will be going down even further this year. So why isn’t CNN blanketing the airwaves with this good news so everyone can celebrate the progress? (Washington Examiner)

Increased natural gas consumption helped bring down U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, according to a recent report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Chances are you haven’t heard. That’s because the mainstream media and environmentalists insist on condemning the Trump administration for championing fossil fuels even though the United States is doing a better job at reducing emissions than many other countries that signed the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

The public can credit much of this success to the fracking boom, which has made natural gas much more plentiful. Cheap, abundant natural gas has gradually been displacing coal, which emits about twice as much carbon dioxide. A recent Rhodium Group study found that coal-fired power generation dropped by 18% last year, the lowest level since 1975.

As the Examiner points out, the reason you don’t hear about this is that most cable news outlets prefer to use rankings generated by something called the Climate Action Tracker, or CAT. The problem is that CAT doesn’t really pay attention to how much actual greenhouse gas is being dumped into the atmosphere. It instead ranks countries on how fully they are in compliance with the Paris accord.

Since we are in the process of pulling out of that fiasco of a deal, America is automatically given a poor score. This makes for a much better headline for liberals because the Bad Orange Man is Bad. Got it?

Meanwhile, thanks to a huge abundance of cheap natural gas (generated via fracking), America reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2% in 2019 after previously cutting them by the same amount the prior year. In fact, U.S. emissions went down by 12% between 2005 and 2017. By next year, American emissions are projected to be the lowest they have been since 1991, a time when the population was much lower than it is now.

By comparison, how are the “good” countries who signed on to the Paris accord doing? As it turns out, France Germany and the United Kingdom all missed their emissions reduction goals last year. Germany’s emissions actually increased after they started gutting their nuclear power program and were forced to restart some coal-fired plants to keep the lights turned on.

The only countries that are given high marks for meeting the climate agreement’s objectives are very small nations with low populations and not very much economic or industrial activity. So who are the real bad guys in this story? Before any global consortium starts trying to dictate to us how to handle our greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps they should get their own houses in order and follow our example. Rather than just talking about reducing emissions, we’re actually doing it. And we didn’t need a treaty with anyone else to get the job done.