This week President Biden announced an ambitious climate target for the United States: cutting the country's emissions in half by 2030, relative to 2005 levels.
Playing catch-up
The chart above explains why this is going to require a monumental effort. The green line shows what US emissions would look like if they had been cut at a steady pace (straight line) from 2005 to 2030. The actual US emissions in blue are not falling at that pace — although they are going down.
To be more specific, in order to meet this new goal, US carbon equivalent emissions would have had to fall at a pace of ~120 Mt CO2 per year since 2005. Instead they've fallen at ~60 Mt CO2. To catch up to the required pace, they need to drop at ~200 Mt CO2... which is a pretty steep acceleration.
What about the pandemic, didn't emissions fall a lot in 2020?
Indeed they did, around 10% according to estimates from the International Energy Agency. The issue is that the 2020 drop (not plotted on the chart) was likely only temporary thanks to reduced economic activity that is, already, bouncing back. Meeting Biden's target will require significantly more permanent effort, investment and change.
