I literally just today learned that the “Biden is destroying the climate, we emitted more greenhouse gas than ever before in 2023” talking point isn’t even “not the whole story” – it’s actually the complete opposite of what actually happened.
Not only are we still way below the high we set in 2005, the rate is still steadily going down. Maybe the people saying this mean the world as a whole set a record, and they’re blaming the entire world’s emissions on Biden? I have no idea.
Anyway, this is what actually happened.
Edit: Hang on, I am wrong or partly wrong. The talking-point version is that US set a record for fossil fuel extraction, not emissions, which is completely accurate and also still terrifying. So fair play I guess.
fuel extraction is hardly a pragmatic tool to measure efficacy of policy, so i think your original point still stands. i’d even go so far as to call pointing out rising extraction while emissions are falling “cherry picking,” and i generally think that phrase is overused.
Oh yeah, I definitely think it’s cherry-picking an individual metric for the purpose of criticizing the one guy high up in government who seems actually to be trying to reduce the planet-destroying death spiral of “let’s consume more every year until it’s physically impossible to continue and the planet is set and committed on a self-continuing course of annihilation.” And, I think the overall goal of the that cherry-picked criticism is to produce a result in government 10 times worse than whatever reasonable-or-not criticisms you might be able to lob at Biden while he’s fighting the inertia of the entire federal government and fossil-fuel-lobbying machine with a really surprising amount of success.
Just, well, trying to get my facts straight at the same time as I’m thinking that.