Listen to this article

New data released on Monday shows US greenhouse gas emissions rose by 6.2% last year compared with 2020. The research firm Rhodium Group reported that the increase was attributed to a slew of causes, including behavior changes after Covid-19 vaccines became widely available. But it also means governmental goals to combat climate change may now be in jeopardy, an outcome that environmental advocates say is alarming. The senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, Tiernan Sittenfeld said, “It is clear that the climate crisis is upon us. It is having devastating consequences. When we hear those emissions are going back up, that is extraordinarily worrisome”. People who stayed home and used less fossil fuel in the first year of the coronavirus pandemic returned to some of their old habits in 2021.

The Rhodium Group also said that the large-scale distribution of vaccines ushering in an economic recovery. Transportation, particularly for moving freight to meet the high demand for consumer products, saw the steepest increase in climate-warming emissions in 2021, though it dropped off in the second half of the year as breakthrough Covid-19 cases rose and new variants spread. Also contributing to the increase was a 17% spike in coal generation, driven by high natural gas prices. Although it was the first annual increase in coal generation since 2014, coal emissions were still 4% lower than they were in 2019. The jump in emissions suggests that the US isn’t on track to meet its commitment under the Paris climate agreement to cut 2005 emission levels by 50% to 52% by 2030.

A partner at the Rhodium Group, Kate Larsen said, “We need to see annual emission reductions of around 5% each year, and this year we saw emissions grow over 6%”. The firm also found that US emissions in 2021 remained 5% below 2019 levels. President Biden’s marquee Build Back Better legislation would have allocated billions of dollars for clean energy as the administration works to drastically reduce emissions, but West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin’s rejection of the bill last month likely doomed it. The US federal authorities said a warming planet makes extreme weather events more frequent and intense, and 2021 was no different. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also issued a report on Monday that 2021 was one of the deadliest and costliest years on record for extreme weather and climate disasters.