Despite their historical responsibility for past emissions and their still-high current emission levels, wealthy nations are failing to provide a model for significantly reducing GHG emissions.
Wealthy countries are slowly advancing in the development of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, as discussed further, but they have yet to develop a convincing model—based on affordable clean energy alternatives—for the rest of the world.
In the US, the EU, and Japan, GHG emissions have declined somewhat over recent decades, but a significant portion of these reductions is due primarily to the transition from coal-fired power plants to natural-gas facilities, since natural gas produces approximately half the CO2 emissions of coal for the same level of energy generation.[1][2][3]
The EU may have reduced its GHG emissions more rapidly, but only through a set of regulations that have controversially hampered economic growth and placed a disproportionate burden on low-income workers, as discussed in another section.[4]