Green Energy Isn’t Really Cutting Carbon Emissions

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted a story about the impact of green energy policies on carbon emissions in various states.

The article reports:

There’s no link between the pro-green energy policies of states and falling carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, but there is a statistically significant link between falling CO2 and natural gas electricity, according to statistical analysis conducted by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Statistical analysis and regressions run by TheDCNF found no statistically significant link existed between the amount a state’s CO2 emissions fell since 2005 and the number of policies supporting green energy implemented by the state. The analysis showed there is an 81 percent chance there’s no link between CO2 emissions and the number of pro-green energy policies, meaning a link between the two likely doesn’t exist. The very small correlation between CO2 emissions and policies was going in the opposite direction from environmentalist claims.

Think about this a minute. According to data from British Petroleum, America ranks fifth in the world for the largest natural gas reserves. We now have a link between lower CO2 emissions and the use of natural gas. We can easily convert our electric plants to natural gas. This would be a big step toward making America energy independent and providing jobs for Americans instead of sending money overseas.

Please follow the link to the article in The Daily Caller to look at the charts which illustrate that the states with fewer green energy policies were the ones that were more successful in cutting CO2 emissions.

The article notes:

The DCNF’s (Daily Caller News Foundation) analysis found states like New Hampshire, Maryland, Maine, Georgia, Nevada and Alaska cut higher percentages of CO2 since 2005 than any others. These states had a combined average of 39 pro-green energy policies. The national average of all states was 51 pro-green energy policies. This suggests the more pro-green energy policies a state has, the less likely it was to reduce CO2 emissions.

This is another example of how excessive government involvement and interference in the free market makes a problem worse instead of solving it. There is a quote, generally attributed to Milton Friedman, that applies to this situation–“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there’d be a shortage of sand.” I truly believe that.