Can Louisiana be Carbon-Neutral by 2050? Gov. Edwards Says Yes

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I think we can all agree that taking better care of our planet is in all of our best interests.  It's not like we can pack up and move to a new planet, so this is our home.  What we can do to make things better, however, is way easier to talk about than to do.

That's why I think the earth-friendly plans laid out by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards are awesome.  According to Popular Science, Edwards set our state on an ambitious trajectory for carbon-neutrality by 2050.  To reach the overall goal, our governor has set several benchmarks along the way that may be a bit too ambitious.

According to the report, one of the mile-markers along our route to a cleaner future would require us to cut emissions by 25% before we get to the year 2025 - that's less than 4 years away!  The next micro-goal is to get that number to 50% by 2030!

Citing a study at LSU, Popular Science has also pointed out that Louisiana's current carbon output has been holding steady at 210 million tons of CO₂.  To be able to remove more than 50 million tons from our current footprint isn't going to be easy.

Consider this: The best numbers the EPA has on the average vehicle's carbon output are 411 grams of CO₂ per mile.  When you factor in that our state has close to a million and a half registered cars on the road driving an average of 24 miles a day just getting us back and forth from work - that's 10 tons every day we go to work (give or take a few tons)!  Now, that's a very rough estimate that assumes that every registered car in the state is driving 24 miles every Monday through Friday, but when you add in power plants, recreational and agricultural machinery, road trips, and so many more things - it's easy to see why this isn't going to be easy.

Since our economy depends so heavily on oil & gas, not even the experts know exactly how we're going to pull this off.