Not even in the wildest dreams of Extinction Rebellion protesters would 2020 have yielded such dramatic boons to their cause. The UK’s first nationwide Covid-19 lockdown led to major reductions in personal consumption, and a dramatic 31 per cent fall in greenhouse gas emissions in April was accompanied by vast improvements in London’s notoriously poor air quality.
But lockdown also led to a record drop in GDP, and an economic crisis that will likely lead to unemployment not seen since the 1980s. This year’s second suspension of economic life, due to end in December, could yet provoke another “lost decade”, making the austerity era of the 2010s look like a time of plenty.
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