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Are measures to tackle climate change working better than the world thought? Emissions of greenhouse gases stalled last year according to the International Energy Agency, even though the global economy kept expanding. There have been only three years in four decades when emissions fell or stopped rising but during each period there was an economic downturn. This time though, it's mainly a shift in energy consumption in China that's behind the halt in emissions. The chief economist of the International Energy Agency has called the findings "a real surprise". But is this a lull before the storm? China's predicting that its emissions won't actually peak until 2030. So will the next decade undo all the good work? I asked Mark Nickels, former editor of London-based magazine Environmental Finance about just how significant these findings were. Certainly it's unprecedented, and it shows that you can break the link between economic growth and growth in emissions as we've done in the EU, to the US to a large extent. To see this in a still fast developing country like China is very exciting and very encouraging. They're bathing in the middle of a bit of a war on coal for reasons of local pollution, which is a big problem in China, they've been closing down inefficient steel plants, they've been increasing their use of renewables. And that has led to a decoupling of emissions growth from the growth in energy consumption. | 
发表于 2016-12-14 20:41:25