Since the start of the year, meanwhile, the non-profit Oil Change International finds that the U.S. has approved more fossil fuel financing than any other country, furnishing $1.5 billion to four projects. Germany came in second. Both were among the 38 countries signed onto the Glasgow Statement unveiled at the UN climate talks held there in 2021, pledging to end new direct public financing for overseas fossil fuel projects by the end of last year.
The watchword in elite climate policy-making circles has long been that widespread prosperity—measured in GDP growth—would trickle down into emissions reductions, as countries develop the capacity to get off of fossil fuels or even eliminate emissions from them. Key to that belief was the idea of decoupling emissions from growth: that countries could continue to grow their GDP while releasing fewer greenhouse gasses—so-called “green growth.” While decoupling is indeed happening, researchers Jefim Vogel and Jason Hickel found in a Lancet Planetary Health paper published this week that current rates of decoupling in the wealthier countries they analyzed would take 220 years to reduce those states’ emissions by 95 percent.
Whatever effect ever-growing GDP is meant to have on carbon emissions, it has not made the world’s richest countries more amendable to helping others decarbonize. Economic indicators are not, after all, sentient. Politicians want to grow their favorite sectors as fast as they please. The pre-occupation of U.S. domestic climate policy has been to supercharge power sector decarbonization here with generous incentives for renewable energy, alongside modest tax breaks for other green industries. But growth in one sector won’t de-grow another: as the U.S. nurtures green industry, it’s likely to continue breaking records for domestic oil production. More than likely, that feat will be cheered on by the same administration demanding other countries cut fossil fuels.