Louisiana has managed to both grow its economy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions over a 14-year period ending in 2014—though it’s done so at a slower pace than most other states who can boast of doing the same, a new Brookings Institute report finds.
The report, released Thursday, examines the pace at which U.S. states have “decoupled” their economies from carbon dioxide emissions in an effort to curb climate change. Louisiana, the report says, decreased carbon emissions by 9% during the 14-year period examined. During that time, the state’s real gross domestic product grew by 14.5%.
“Decoupling” economies from the growth in carbon emissions is critical to curbing climate change, the report says, but some have viewed it as an impossible task. And though states are having varying degrees of success at “decoupling,” the report says at least 30 states and the District of Columbia are proving that it is possible to clean up and grow their economies.
“This success is an encouraging juncture in the campaign to limit global warming, and would seemt to license cautious optimism,” reads the report. “Yet now all of that is in question. With the stunning election of Donald Trump to the presidency, every aspect of the low-carbon paradigm for national and world progress has been thrown into doubt, starting with the federal government’s support of the quest to ‘decarbonize’ the economy by decoupling economic growth from emissions growth.”
