According to an analysis by Ars Technica, the 2008 economic crisis was an inflection point for the United States' energy relationship. Graphing data from the World Bank and the Global Carbon Project shows that carbon emissions have trended downward since then, even with year-to-year fluctuations. Outside of the pandemic, GDP growth has remained steady, indicating that the US has "opened the scissors"—decoupling economic growth from fossil fuel emissions.
The analysis points to Sweden as an earlier example of this pattern. Sweden's emissions began declining in 1996 and are now down by a third from that peak, while its GDP has more than doubled. That long track record suggests the US shift is not a temporary anomaly but a structural change.
Still, the author notes reasons for caution. Emissions are not falling fast enough to avoid the worst climate impacts, data centers are bringing their own fossil fuel generators, and the current administration is hostile to renewable energy. Even so, the past decade-plus demonstrates that US economic growth does not require rising carbon emissions—so any future emissions increases would be a choice, not a necessity.