The New Yorker:

Many of the Trump Administration’s proposed rollbacks of climate policies run counter to its own goals.

By Elizabeth Kolbert

Imagine the following scenario. You are shopping for a new refrigerator. You find a few models that have the same dimensions as your old fridge. One has an ice maker, which might be convenient. Another has an interior water dispenser, which might also be convenient. A third has an ice maker and, also, the familiar blue Energy Star label. You’re having a hard time keeping all the features straight, so you decide to go with the third, knowing it will save you money on your electricity bills.

Decisions like this are being made hundreds of times per minute—each day, it’s estimated, more than a million Energy Star-certified products are sold. These products range from refrigerators (models with an Energy Star label are about nine per cent more efficient than those which just meet the minimum federal standard) to dryers (here, Energy Star models are about twenty per cent more efficient) to air-conditioners, dishwashers, pool pumps, commercial water heaters, vending machines—the list goes on and on. The Energy Star rating system, which dates back to 1992, is jointly run by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, and has been called—admittedly, by its own website—“one of the most successful voluntary U.S. government programs in history.” Energy Star—once again, according to its website—has, in the course of the past thirty-three years, reduced electricity demand by five trillion kilowatt-hours and cut greenhouse-gas emissions by four billion metric tons.

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