Despite a steady downwards trend in the past decade, carbon emissions in the United States spiked throughout the course of 2018. Carbon emissions are only one of several greenhouse gases currently posing a threat to the environment, and the problem may be worsening with a growing American economy.
The spike occurred last year despite efforts to switch to cleaner renewable energy sources and shutting down numerous coal plants. Carbon dioxide made up 81 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2016, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and saw almost a three percent overall emissions decrease from 2016 to 2017. In 2018, however, they rose by 3.4 percent.
Many coal plants shut down in 2018, despite Trump’s 2018 State of the Union Address in which he said, “We have ended the war on American energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal.”
In 2017, coal usage dropped to only comprising of 30.1 percent of U.S. electricity, a stark contrast to being over 50 percent a decade ago. Although it is the cheapest form of energy, burning coal produces copious amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas output is closely tied with the U.S. economy. Heat and power generation make up a quarter of all carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
Although recently the United States is producing increasingly more carbon, California has actually been able to bring carbon emissions down to the levels they were at in the 1990s.
Biology and AP Environmental Science teacher Jessica Valera teaches her students about the environmental impact of greenhouse gases and how they can reduce their personal carbon footprints.
Practical ways for students to reduce greenhouse gas emissions include eating less meat, biking, walking, or using public transportation and making sustainable choices when shopping.
“I like to tell my students that you vote with every dollar you spend,” Valera said. “Even though the students here are just adolescents or young adults [and] they might not have the spending power that the grown ups have, they still have opportunities every day to make choices in terms of whether they’re choosing to bring overly packaged food for lunch, or if they’re recycling their things that they can recycle on campus.”
Maia Bhaumik, vice president of the Leaders for Environmental Awareness and Protection club, tries to reduce her family’s carbon footprint by making sustainable choices.
“I generally just use my hand-me-downs,” Bhaumik said. “It’s a pretty good way to lower your personal carbon emissions. I convinced my family to only eat red meat once a week because cows produce a lot of methane as well as take a lot of other energy sources to process them.”
Aragon’s introduction of green waste compost bins on campus this semester will aid in reducing students’ greenhouse gas emissions. Allowing composted material to decompose naturally in bins at Aragon is a better alternative to incineration in landfills, which would ultimately release greenhouse gases.
“It’s not just that when you put a banana peel in the green compost bin that there will be less material going to the landfill,” Valera said, “but when organic compounds decompose in an environment that doesn’t have oxygen, or anaerobically, they release methane, which is also a greenhouse gas.”
Although individuals can help slow the effects of climate change, a lot of responsibility falls on the government and corporations.
“There has to be funding for research and development and implementation of cleaner burning energy sources,” Valera said. “The priority has to be with either developing technologies or expanding existing technologies, and that being the new normal We can’t rely on coal and other fossil fuels for energy.”
However, Bhaumik is not optimistic about real action being taken against climate change.
“I think we’ve gotten to a point where we would need immediate change, and it’s just honestly not going to happen with all the politics,” Bhaumik said. “[With] big oil and disbelievers [in climate change], it’s just not going to happen … it’s kind of hard to see that it would be reversible, realistically.”
