As the scientific community warns the world must dramatically and rapidly slash carbon emissions to avert global climate disaster, the United States is expanding fossil fuel extraction far more quickly than any other nation and is on pace to account for 60 percent of the global growth in oil and gas production between now and 2030.

“We need a complete overhaul of our economy with a Green New Deal, and that overhaul must include standing up to the fossil fuel industry in order to take us off this path of devastation for our climate and communities.”
—Kelly Trout, Oil Change International

These are just two alarming findings from a report (pdf) published Wednesday by Oil Change International (OCI), which warns that—unless radical action on the scale of a Green New Deal is taken—U.S. fossil fuel production could single-handedly imperil the world’s ability to adequately confront the climate crisis before it’s too late.

“Our findings present an urgent and existential emergency for lawmakers in the United States at all levels of government. The oil and gas industry is expanding further and faster in the United States than in any other country at precisely the time when we must begin rapidly decarbonizing to prevent runaway climate disaster,” said Kelly Trout, senior research analyst at OCI and co-author of the report, which was produced in collaboration with 350.org, Friends of the Earth, and over a dozen other progressive organizations.

“This report should be a wake-up call for elected officials who consider themselves to be climate leaders,” Trout added. “We need a complete overhaul of our economy with a Green New Deal, and that overhaul must include standing up to the fossil fuel industry in order to take us off this path of devastation for our climate and communities. Anything less than a full, swift, and just managed decline of fossil fuel production is too little, too late.”

Titled “Drilling Towards Disaster,” OCI’s report estimates that the continued expansion of massive fossil fuel extraction and pipeline projects throughout the U.S. under President Donald Trump has put the nation on track to account for 60 percent of global growth in fossil fuel production between 2019 and 2030—the year by which United Nations experts say the world must cut carbon emissions in half to avert planetary catastrophe.

According to OCI’s research, the U.S. is expanding oil and gas extraction “at least four times more than any other country.”

Additionally, the new analysis finds that the United States is on pace to release 120 billion tons of new carbon pollution—”equivalent to the lifetime CO2 emissions of nearly 1,000 coal-fired power plants”—into the atmosphere between 2018 and 2050.

“If not curtailed, U.S. oil and gas expansion will impede the rest of the world’s ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable decline of oil and gas production,” the report warns.