Concrete is tipping us into climate catastrophe. It's payback time

Cement has transformed the world, but now threatens to wreck the environment. We need to tax it, nowFind the rest of our Guardian concrete week pieces hereTucked away in volume three of the technical data for Britain's ?53bn high speed rail project is a table that shows 20m tonnes of concrete will have to be poured to build the requisite 105 miles of track, culverts, bridges and tunnels. It is enough, it has been calculated, to pave over the entire city of Manchester.A more modest 3 million tonnes of concrete will be needed to construct the Hinckley B nuclear power station in Somerset, and the proposed new runway at Heathrow will require one million tonnes. Continue reading...