Because of fracking, the United States reduced its greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, according to a new estimate. This comes after an increase in emissions in 2018 that happened because it was so cold.

This winding course of events has led to some confused emotions among environmentalists who like to hate fracking and President Trump.

Yet in 2019, the third year of the Trump presidency, the U.S. reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 2.1% according to an early estimate by the Rhodium Group.

The reason? Mostly, it’s that we’re getting our electricity in less greenhouse gas-intensive ways.

Emissions from electric power generation dropped by a massive 10% last year, according to this estimate. That’s because of “the switch from coal to natural gas and renewables in the electric power sector,” according to the Rhodium Group.

Mostly, though, it’s about fracking, which allows cleaner and less carbon-intensive natural gas to replace dirtier and more CO2-heavy coal. Despite the promises of Democrats and the scare stories of Republicans, it didn’t take the EPA to cut coal usage in half over 12 years. It took a cheaper form of reliable energy — and that’s natural gas obtained through fracking.

Renewable energy is a much smaller factor in this record drop in coal usage. It's really a story of fracking.

From the Rhodium Group Rhodium Group

Liberal environmentalists have very mixed feelings about this. “Despite everything, U.S. emissions dipped in 2019,” reads the headline at the environmentalist website Grist. “Perhaps surprisingly, total emissions fell 2 percent compared with the year before,” the article begins.

Why should we be surprised? And what's the “everything” that should have caused emissions to go up?

I assume they just mean Trump.

Trump is how environmentalist liberals framed this same report a year ago when emissions went up. “U.S. emissions are rising under Trump,” the Pacific Standard wrote. Vox’s article a year ago began with the words “The Trump administration.”

But Trump wasn’t what caused the emissions spike a year ago. Weather did: 2018 was colder than 2017.

Yup. Dropping temperatures from 2017 to 2018 caused the climate catastrophe journalists tried to pin on Trump.

“2018 was colder (and closer to the ten-year average),” the Rhodium Group explains. “This boosted year-on-year demand for heating in homes, offices, stores and factories. 2019 had about as many heating degree days (HDDs) as 2018, so there wasn’t the same year-on-year spike.”

This year didn’t see a year-over-year temperature drop, but it did see an abundant harvest of fruits of fracking, and that was good for the climate, even while being bad for coal and environmentalist bloggers.