Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Belarus has been racked by protests since its dictator Alexander Lukashenko stole an election in August.

Our correspondent meets with the probable actual winner, a modest former teacher now in exile,

who holds out great hope for Belarus to become a democracy.

And have you ever watched candy floss or cotton candy being made?

The sweet fibers seem to come together from nowhere.

Turns out if you feed the machine plastic instead of sugar,

you get the makings of a medical-grade filter for a face mask.

First up, though. I've asked the mine workers of the country for a greater output of coal, and I'm confident

that they are doing the best to produce it.

In 1948, the British politician Emmanuel Shinwell appealed to people to avoid wasting coal.

But just as I am asking the miners for a greater effort to give you the coal you need,

I also ask users of fuel at work and at home to burn coal carefully and to avoid waste.

Then coal was seen as key to a prosperous future.

Now it's seen as a means to a hotter and deadlier one.

It accounts for nearly half of the global energy

system's carbon dioxide emissions. This week, a United Nations report laid out how coal

use must be drastically reduced if there's to be any hope of reaching the Paris Agreement's

target of limiting warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The UN's Secretary General, Antonio Gutierrez, urged the world to get rid of it.

It is time to put a price on carbon, to phase out fossil fuel finance and then fossil food subsidies,

to stop building new coal power plants and alt coal power financing

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