It is easy to talk about doomsday scenarios, but the UK has already gone a long way to ensuring it has a green future
With thousands of diplomats gathered in the Egyptian desert to negotiate new climate deals at Cop27, the mood is altogether pessimistic. The world is well on course to roar past the limits needed to keep warming to just 1.5C, with little sign of the commitments required to reach that goal.
Beneath the gloom, however, there are reasons to be optimistic about where the world might end by 2050, with Britain a leading example.
From Britain’s rapid abandonment of coal, to cleaner air the climate picture, in Britain at least, is not as grim as doomsday predictions might have it.
The headline figure underlining all this is that Britain’s emissions were down more than a third on their 2010 levels by 2021, even with emissions bouncing back from lockdown inactivity. That isn’t by some miracle, but instead due to hard work to increase energy efficiency and green the grid.