U.S. greenhouse gas emissions jumped in 2021, a threat to climate goals

The Port of Los Angeles has a bridge over a container ship.

Mario Tama is a photographer.

The data shows that greenhouse gas emissions rose last year.

The spike was caused by a number of factors, including behavior changes after the availability of COVID-19 vaccines. Environmental advocates say it's alarming that governmental goals to combat climate change may be in jeopardy.

The climate crisis is upon us. Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, told NPR that it was having devastating consequences. "When we hear that emissions are going up, it's worrisome."

The Rhodium Group found that people who stayed home and used less fossil fuels in the first year of the epidemic returned to their old habits in the second year.

Climate-warming emissions increased the most in transportation in the second half of the year as breakthrough COVID-19 cases rose and new variant spread, though it dropped off in the final half of the year.

The increase was caused by a spike in coal generation, which was driven by high natural gas prices. Coal generation increased for the first time in four years, but coal emissions were still 4% lower than they were in 2019.

The spike is throwing the targets off track.

The country isn't on track to meet its commitment under the Paris climate agreement to cut 2005 emission levels by 50-52% by the year 2023, according to the jump in emissions.

"We need to see annual emission reductions of around 5% each year, and this year we saw emissions grow over 6%," Kate Larsen, a partner at the Rhodium Group, told NPR.

The firm found that the U.S. emissions were 5% below the levels of 2019.

The bill would have allocated billions of dollars for clean energy as the administration works to drastically reduce emissions, but West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's rejection of the bill last month likely doomed it.

Federal authorities say that the extreme weather events of 2021 were no different than before.

The report by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that in the year of 2021, there were more deaths in weather and climate disasters than in any other year.

This story was originally published in the Morning Edition live blog.