Ed Davey, the energy and climate change secretary, has postponed a decision on whether to include greenhouse gases from shipping and aeroplanes in the UK's carbon targets.

A decision had been expected this week, but now will not be made until 2016, after the next general election, which is also when the fifth carbon budget – setting out the UK's emissions from 2028 to 2032 – will be decided. Green campaigners were angered by the deferral, which they said was unnecessary.

The issue is one which has divided ministers, as many on the right of the Tory party – including the chancellor – are reluctant to do anything that can be seen as strengthening environmental regulations. If the greenhouse gases from aviation and shipping were included in the targets, it could mean other sectors, including electricity generation and industry, would have to make steeper cuts in their emissions.

An explosion of car use has made fast-growing Asian cities the epicentre of global air pollution and become, along with obesity, the world's fastest growing cause of death according to a major study of global diseases.

In 2010, more than 2.1m people in Asia died prematurely from air pollution, mostly from the minute particles of diesel soot and gasses emitted from cars and lorries. Other causes of air pollution include construction and industry. Of these deaths, says the study published in The Lancet, 1.2 million were in east Asia and China, and 712,000 in south Asia, including India.

The head of the airline industry's global body has singled out the British government for a stinging attack, accusing it of lacking the understanding and political will to come up with answers on Heathrow while imposing the highest air taxes in the world.

Tony Tyler, the director general of Iata, the International Air Transport Association, said: "What the industry has been asking for, and waiting for, for a long time is a clear policy that recognises the contribution aviation makes to the British economy. Adding a new runway at Heathrow would be a sensible thing to do.

"There are always good reasons for doing nothing, we need a little bit of political effort to get the right decision made. All the evidence is they don't seem to get it."

Electric cars still have something of an image problem. Aside from questions about whether they are as green as their manufacturers claim, for many motorists there is a more basic problem - they're just not cool.

The SRZero is one of several initiatives designed to improve electric vehicles' image. It's an all-electric, 400bhp "supercar" with a top speed of 200kph, a range of 400km, and can accelerate from 0 to 100kph in seven seconds. The SRZero is, in essence, a modified version of Radical Sportscars' SR8. It retains that vehicle's chassis and bodywork, but instead of a combustion engine it has two Evo Electrics motors – and some serious battery power.