Post date: May 3, 2023

By Graeme Schnarre

The United States is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and influential countries in the world. The U.S. dominates with one of the largest militaries and economies in addition to having a massive cultural imprint span on other countries. However for such a powerful country there is a subject where we fall behind; that subject is climate change. The U.S. has become responsible for 24.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions, with the U.S. having created such a large footprint it would be reasonable to believe that the fight against climate change would also be led by the U.S. But the issue that the entire world is facing is being met with sub par solutions by the world's most powerful and influential country.

The United States is making an effort as they along with 124 other countries have signed the COP 26 claiming to become carbon neutral by 2050. Sadly this document is nothing more than just a piece of paper holding no true legal binding. Other than this agreement the United States hasn’t presented many promising plans to back the egregious carbon neutral goal. Other high energy first world countries such as Germany and Iceland have put promising plans out hoping to become carbon neutral around the time of 2040; not only is the time frame shorter than that of the U.S. but the plans to achieve these goals are favorable. In all fairness to the United States it is more complex for us to switch to a carbon neutral economy since we have a much higher per capita energy usage and an economy that is historically tied to fossil fuels. The U.S. is also backing infrastructure spending that relies more on electric vehicles and other technologies that would lower emissions. 

Although the United States is producing policies that on paper seem impactful to aiding the climate crisis it is only writing on paper with nothing really holding up the promises. With the policies made there has been minimal effort working towards these goals; and for the goals being as vast as they are much more effort would need to be put into the plans to reach the ultimate climate crisis goals. For the United States being one of the if not the most powerful and influential countries in the world it should be leading the charge on such great issues as climate change, sadly this is not only the case but the efforts we are making to solve these problems are fractional to what we are capable of.