Despite their climate pledges, the U.S. and others export huge amounts of fossil fuels

The U.S. may be on the verge of passing the most consequential climate change legislation ever. President Biden is expected to tout it at a big climate change meeting in Glasgow this week. But that won't change one of the country's major sources of greenhouse gas emissions: fossil fuel exports.

The U.S. is among countries that plan to keep exporting oil, natural gas and coal for decades to come even as they work to zero out climate-warming fossil fuel emissions at home. In an increasingly controversial quirk, this is perfectly acceptable under the Paris climate agreement.

Under that deal, countries set targets to reduce their climate-warming emissions. But fossil-fuel exporting countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Norway, do not have to count emissions produced by their exports. Instead, they are counted by