是时候加倍脱碳工作了

The Easter bank holiday heralded bright news for green businesses and environmentalists in the United Kingdom.

Not only did new datarevealrenewable's share of electricity generation hit a record high of almost 30 percent in 2017, but provisional government statistics showed overall greenhouse gas emissions fell 2.6 percent in 2017 compared to the previous year.

Unfortunately, the picture is not as bright elsewhere. Recent weeks have seen the shoots of a deeply worrying new trend appear—the recoupling of emissions to economic growth.

For years uncoupling emissions from economic growth was something of a Holy Grail for environmentalists, proof the global economy could thrive and living standards rise even as we slashed emissions and averted dangerous global warming. It promised a future that could keep everyone happy.

And while clean technologies and low carbon infrastructure provided evidence such uncoupling was theoretically possible, the years around the 2015 Paris Agreement fueled hopes it already was coming to pass.

Greenhouse gas emissions from the global energy industry rose 1.4 percent in 2017, marking the first rise in three years.

International Energy Agency (IEA) datashowed that since 2015, global energy-related emissions had remained flat, even as the economy grew. Three years of plateauing emissions, unprecedented in a time of economic growth, was hailed as a sign the world was starting to "bend the curve" of global emissions. As emissions growth stalled, scientists, environmentalists and commentators became increasingly confident a peak had been reached.

But last month we came down to earth with a bump. On March 22,the IEAconfirmed greenhouse gas emissions from the global energy industry rose 1.4 percent in 2017, marking the first rise in three years.

去年全球能源需求增长了2.1％，这使它助长了—more than double the pace of 2016—根据IEA的说法，这是由于中国和印度等快速发展的经济体强大的经济增长所驱动的。

Just five days later, news came that澳大利亚的温室气体排放率达到了最高水平，多亏了土地清理和工业活动的提升。

A week after that, new data from Thomson Reuters revealed greenhouse gas emissions regulated by the EU's Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) haverisen for the first time in seven years.

这个消息是一个紧急的警钟，我们不能在脱碳时放在桂冠上。

Growth in the ETS emissions was spurred by—yes, you guessed it—strong growth in the European economy, which increased 2.5 percent in 2017, according to the research team.

Inevitably, none of this news generated the mainstream media attention headlines that should be sparked by a trend that could prove catastrophic for global efforts to tackle climate change, and by extension the long-term health of the global economy.

但这一切都肯定引起了一个问题：这是否使“绿色增长”是一个可以实现的目标的想法？

答案当然不是。或者说，最好不要。

The U.K. is still a leading light in demonstrating that economic growth can go hand in hand with falling emissions—last year the economy grew 1.8 percent even as emissions fell, according to preliminary data from PwC.

Meanwhile, the IEA data revealed Japan and the United States also delivered falling emissions as their economies grew. In fact, the biggest drop was recorded in the U.S., where energy-related emissions fell by 0.5 percent as energy demand shrank and new renewable generation came online.

人们担心的是，许多工业化经济体的排放量被亚洲新兴的经济超级大国的排放飙升所抵消。欧洲和北美是否只是出口其排放？这是一个有效的问题，但这里也有乐观的理由。中国和印度在低碳基础设施上投资了大量投资，尽管去年全球排放量增加了，但它们尚未与不断增长的全球经济相结合。全球经济活动的碳强度仍在下降，这表明绿色增长仍然是一个合理的野心。

Growth in the ETS emissions was spurred by strong growth in the European economy.

但是，这个消息是一个紧急的警钟，我们不能在脱碳时放在桂冠上。我们不仅需要更快地逐步淘汰诸如煤炭之类的明显上升排放的驱动因素，而且数据迅速缓解了新的脱碳挑战。

Much more work needs to be done to promote better energy efficiency for starters, with the IEA's Fatih Birol warning of a "dramatic slowdown" in the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency in 2017, thanks to a lack of ambition from policymakers. But businesses must play their part, and programs such as the Climate Group'sEP100可以帮助他们向他们展示。

Meanwhile, the transport challenge is becoming harder to ignore. Already in the U.K. and U.S., transport is the largest source of greenhouse gases, and emissions are still rising every year. In Australia, it was one of the root causes behind rising emissions in 2017. It's the same story in the EU — aviation emissions alone shot up a staggering 13 percent in 2017, according to the Point Carbon data.

我们需要急切地意识到 - 脱碳，铁路，海上和航空旅行与在抵抗气候变化的斗争中关闭煤炭发电厂一样重要。政府必须同时采用胡萝卜和坚持解决问题的方法，同时将创新支出引导到绿色技术中，并削减最污染的活动，技术和行为。本周有争议的决定可悲的是，来自美国环境保护局（EPA）是这种方法的完全相反。

数据表明，我们有可能让绿色生长的圣杯穿过我们的手指。保持它掌握的唯一方法是加倍脱碳的努力，并确保下次排放和增长以各自的方式以他们的方式行驶时，这是永久的。