Full Title: Cutting Carbon Pollution While Promoting Economic Growth
Author(s): Myriam Alexander-Kearns and Alison Cassady
Publisher(s): Center for American Progress
Publication Date: May 1, 2015
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Recent experiences in the United States and abroad call into question the conventional wisdom that a country’s economy and its carbon dioxide emissions are coupled—that is, that one cannot grow without the other growing as well. Between 2005 and 2014, the U.S. economy grew by 13 percent, while U.S. energy-related carbon pollution fell by more than 8 percent. The U.S. economy is becoming more energy efficient, and its energy mix is cleaner and less carbon intensive than it was a decade ago. As a result, the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, predicts that—absent new climate-related policies—the economy will continue its upward trajectory, and carbon pollution will remain flat. Additionally, in 2006, California passed emissions reduction legislation, and the member states of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, instated a carbon cap-and-trade program in 2009. Both California and RGGI have experienced strong gross domestic product, or GDP, growth amid declining emissions.