CO2’s Political Fingerprint

Rob Gordon / October 30, 2009

Unless they had explicitly named them, the Senate’s Kerry-Boxer and the House’s Waxman-Markey global warming bills could not have been better designed to inflict more pain on the states that swung red in the last election than on those that went blue. The American Clean Energy and Security Act in the Senate and House’s Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act both call for dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, eventually 83%. (Isn’t it curious that neither bill is titled after the impending global warming catastrophe that they are supposedly designed to avert?)

When EPA’s data for carbon dioxide emissions by state is compared with state populations and the 83% reduction called for in both bills is applied, a particularly eerie pattern emerges for those who live in the states that President Obama failed to carry last November. Namely, the pain inflicted upon them is likely to be much greater as the work that their citizens do, the things that they make (one being energy) and the circumstances of their day to day lives result in higher per capita CO2 emissions from fossil fuels for their state. See the chart below… (more…)