Carbon Output Shrinking as Economies Grow

Some odd people think that environmental policies and mandated efficiencies ruin economies, well, now there is another reason why those people are wrong. A report just released will hopefully have an impact on the climate talks in Poland happening this month shows the disconnect between economic growth and destroying the planet. Their findings buck the trend of wastefulness being associated with economic growth, which means that in all likelihood pro-environemnt polices of the past decade are having a very positive effect!

“The small increase in emissions [of 2012]… may be the first sign of a more permanent slowdown in the increase of global CO2 emissions, and ultimately of declining global emissions,” declares the Trends in Global CO2 Emissions: 2013 Report, published by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) last week. It analyses the latest emissions data, right up to 2012.

The data show that global carbon dioxide emissions rose by 1.4 per cent in 2012. Allowing for it being a leap year, the underlying increase was just 1.1 per cent, says the report, compared with an average of 2.9 per cent since 2000.

Importantly, the emissions rise is considerably less than the increase in global GDP of 3.5 per cent. “We see a decoupling of CO2 emissions from global economic growth,” says Greet Janssens-Maenhout of the JRC in Ispra, Italy, a co-author on the report.

Read more here.

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