Does the good outweigh the bad?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s report on “Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009” was officially released on March 31st. Two of its key conclusions:

Given that the country was mired in its most severe recession in three quarters of a century, it’s not all that surprising that emissions were down — after all, emissions are related to economic activity, so when economic activity tanks so should emissions. Kinda like the saying that there’s a silver lining in every cloud.

But upon further inspection, I was surprised by the EIA’s data on the causes of the drop in emissions — the recession does not tell the whole story.

The decline in U.S. gross domestic