Trump Policies Sent U.S. Tumbling in a Climate Ranking
For four years under President Donald Trump, the United States all but stopped trying to combat climate change at the federal level. Trump is no longer in office, but his presidency left the country far behind in a race that was already difficult to win.
A new report from researchers at Yale and Columbia universities shows that the United States’ environmental performance has tumbled in relation to other countries — a reflection of the fact that, while the United States squandered nearly half a decade, many of its peers moved deliberately.
But, underscoring the profound obstacles to cutting greenhouse gas emissions rapidly enough to prevent the worst effects of climate change, even that movement was insufficient. The report’s sobering bottom line is that, while almost every country has pledged by 2050 to reach net-zero emissions (the point where their activities no longer add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere), almost none are on track to do it.
The report, called the Environmental Performance Index, or EPI, found that, based on their trajectories from 2010 through 2019, only Denmark and Britain were on a sustainable path to eliminate emissions by midcentury.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-policies-sent-u-tumbling-115459618.html
