An environmental silver lining to the global recession?
From a environmental standpoint, the ongoing economic meltdown might not be all doom and gloom.
Partly due to the global economic crisis that began in the second half of 2008, CO2 emissions for the European Union’s 27 members dropped six percent last year, to 2.11 billion tons of greenhouse gases from 2.24, Terra Daily reported today.
“Today’s numbers tell us two things. They confirm that the recession is leading to lower emissions, with both industry output and power demand down,” Kjersti Ulset, a Point Carbon official, told Agence France Presse. ”But they also show that the carbon market works as intended. The emission reductions we see in the power sector are partly a result of the high carbon price we had for the first half of 2008.”
Though similar statistics aren’t readily available for the U.S. (at least that I can find), it would be interesting to see how the recession/depression has affected the U.S.’s carbon emissions as well.
There might be a silver (green?) lining to an otherwise abysmal economic climate after all.
