Economic growth no longer means higher carbon emissions

If anywhere can claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution it is Coalbrookdale, a pretty village in England’s West Midlands. In 1709 Abraham Darby, a local merchant, leased a foundry and fed the furnace with coking coal, rather than charcoal made from wood. The use of the fossil fuel meant he could make pig iron much more cheaply, and cast it into pots, pans and cauldrons for cooking—the kind of low-cost manufactured goods that would, over the next three centuries, produce an unprecedented rise in living standards across the world.