Republican debate: Tim Scott is correct that our carbon emissions have fallen with capitalist expansion
Tiana Lowe Doescher
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When asked at the first Republican presidential debate if he believes in anthropogenic climate change, Vivek Ramaswamy called the phenomenon a hoax, accusing the rest of his competitors of being “bought and paid for.” Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) decided to take a different tact.
“America has cut our carbon footprint by half in the last 25 years,” the South Carolina senator said Wednesday night. “Where’s it increasing? China. Africa.”
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In the mere 20 years from the turn of the century to 2020, American carbon emissions fell by a staggering 26%, even as our economy increased by 150% in that time. Scott, who is closing in on front-runners former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in key early primary states, is correct about China and Africa. China’s carbon emissions have tripled since the start of the century, while Africa’s have increased by 53%.
Far from catering to the fallacies of the anti-growth agenda of the Green New Deal, Scott pointed out that the trajectories of the West and the rest are diametrically opposed. While command economy autocracies, the planet’s worst human rights violators, and their allies have dramatically increased their annual carbon emissions, the U.S. economy has expanded as its carbon footprint has decreased.
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Contrary to the axioms undergirding the Green New Deal, capitalism is not the cause of global disaster. Rather, free markets and the technological innovation that result from them are precisely the solutions to climate change.