Changing the way we measure economic growth may help redress the balance between nature and the exploitation of resources.
Warnings about the consequences of climate change are arriving at an alarming pace.
Vulnerable countries will be the most affected, despite being the least responsible for climate change.
And it appears we may have miscalculated the way we measure rising sea levels and biodiversity in economics.
We talk to economist and University of Cambridge professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, as well as Aslak Grinsted, associate professor of Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth at the University of Copenhagen.
Plus, it has never been easy for women and ethnic minorities to access money for startups. We talk to Angelika Burawska, chief operating officer at SFC Capital.
The U.K.’s greenhouse gas emissions fell by 9% in 2020 as coronavirus lockdowns saw a drop in road use and pollution from the business sector.
The large annual drop puts the country at almost halfway to its legal goal of effectively eliminating the U.K.’s territorial emissions by 2050, according to provisional data from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
The long term decline in U.K. emissions has been driven by the shift away from burning coal for power generation. As electricity demand fell and renewable energy made up a larger share of the power mix, carbon dioxide emissions from the sector fell by nearly 12% in 2020.
U.K. CO2 pollution – which makes up the largest proportion of greenhouse gas emissions – fell by almost 11% in 2020, caused mainly by a significant drop in road use, as lockdowns ground the country to a halt.
Half of the drop in CO2 output came from the 20% fall in transport emissions. Meanwhile residential sector emissions increased by 1.8% as people stayed at home as 85% of U.K. households burn gas for heating.
The U.K.’s net-zero emissions target doesn’t include emissions from imported goods or emissions attached to shipping and aviation.
