Climate scientists warn that tackling global warming has never been more urgent, or our time to take action more scarce. But it is not an impossible fight. Our changing climate is just one symptom of a malfunctioning economic system - by investing in new, green infrastructure and recognising that most global carbon deposits are now unburnable, we can move to a low-carbon and sustainable economy.
Key Facts
- Climate change could cause 200 million people to become refugees by 2050.
- The greenhouse effect was first discovered by Joseph Fourier in 1824.
- Approximately 65 per cent of the annual growth in carbon dioxide emissions is due to the increase in global economic activity.
Featured Work
Publication // November 10, 2012
The economics of oil dependence: a glass ceiling to recovery
As growth in oil production slows and global demand continues to rise, sustained high oil prices and price spikes will have a significant impact on the economy, in effect placing a glass ceiling on economic recovery
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Blog post // October 1, 2012
50 months to avoid climate disaster – and a change is in the air
"One or other of us will have to go," Oscar Wilde is supposed to have said on his deathbed to the hated wallpaper in his room. More
Publication // September 5, 2012
Unburnable Carbon
In 2010, governments from around the world gathered at an international climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico and agreed to limit climate change to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. A year earlier, a group of leading climate scientists concluded that to retain a one-in-five chance of keeping global average surface temperature within this ‘safe’ limit, global carbon emissions could not exceed 886 billion tonnes of CO2 between 2000 and 2049. More