In the wake of news that Gov. Roy Cooper wants North Carolina to pursue reduction of carbon emissions on its own, now is probably a good time to revisit a 2008 Carolina Journal article headlined “Report: N.C. Can’t Impact Climate Change.”
As state and federal lawmakers continue to debate climate-change regulatory legislation, a report from the nonpartisan Science & Public Policy Institute says that emissions reductions by North Carolina would do nothing to reduce regional or global climate change.
The report, one of 15 published by the institute examining state-level climate change data, also uses long-term trends to counter the argument that North Carolina is experiencing abnormal warming, reduced rainfall, a disproportionate number of hurricanes, and rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities. …
… In addition to examining long-term trends in temperature increases, sea levels, and weather patterns, the report says that climate-mitigation efforts in North Carolina would have no impact on effectively curbing carbon dioxide emissions on a global scale.
Carbon dioxide emissions in North Carolina accounted for 0.57 percent of worldwide emissions in 2003, and the proportion will grow smaller in the 21st century as the demand for energy in developing nations grows, the report says.
“This means that even a complete cessation of all CO2 emissions in North Carolina would be undetectable globally, and would be entirely subsumed by rising global emissions in less than two months’ time,” Ferguson wrote.
“Even if the entire United States were to close down its economy completely and revert to the Stone Age, without even the ability to light fires, the growth in emissions from China and India would replace our entire emissions in little more than a decade,” he said.
