A recent article in the Guardian Weekly has highlighted that despite there being a recession in some parts of the world recently, the volume of carbon emissions went up last year not down.
It has been expected that carbon emissions would have gone down in a year when the economy in many countries faltered. Unpublished figures from the International Energy Agency suggest otherwise. This means that a projected rise of 2 degrees Celsius leading to dangerous climate change is more likely to happen. This rise in emissions is a sign of “business as usual”.
It makes a mockery of Climate Change Acts passed in both Westminster and Holyrood. Fracking needs to be stopped in it’s tracks in the UK, and we should be stopping attempts to drill in the Arctic.
Much of the increase in emissions has come from developing countries but there are other factors at work: 80% of power stations that will be in use in 2020 are being built now and most will use fossil fuels making it very difficult for ambitious targets set out in these Climate Change Acts to be met. The link between rising GDP and emissions has not been broken. We need to stop measuring our economy in terms of GDP and start making it more of a sustainable/zero growth one.
