Capitalism Fails Again

Efforts to keep global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius warming threshold will very likely fail, warns environmental research group Worldwatch Institute. Global coal consumption rose 3 percent from 2012 to 2013, reaching over 3,800 million tons of oil equivalent in 2013 (mtoe). "If coal consumption continues to increase and no meaningful binding multilateral agreements on climate change are made, attempts to combat global climate change will likely fail," writes Christoph von Friedeburg, a research fellow at the Worldwatch Institute. 

Further troubling in 2012, "the average heat content of coal produced in the United States was about 23.4 megajoules per kilogram (MJ/kg), down from 29.17 MJ/kg in 2005." The group notes. "This means that more and more coal needs to be burned to generate the same amount of heat for a desired electricity output."

China and India, are the primary drivers of increasing coal consumption. Coal demand in China has almost tripled since 2000, notes the group, rising from 683.5 mtoe at the turn of the century to 1,933.1 mtoe in 2013—more than half of the global figure. In contrast, the United States has decreased its coal use, but continues to export coal (and its related pollution) to other countries. According to an Associated Press analysis published this summer, in 2012, about 9 percent of worldwide coal exports originated in the U.S.

The recent climate change talks held in Lima, Peru instead of committing to emissions limitations that are more meaningful than those agreed in the deficient Kyoto Protocol or its equally weak Doha amendment, States merely reiterated their intention not to agree to any commitments. Its decisions contained a confusing mix of compromises, double-speak, and often just simple says nothing of any significant meaning. The reality is that some nations don’t want to take responsibility for action and are ready to give up on an agreement that will honor what science and existing international law. Rather they are resigned to adopting a series of face-saving gestures that leave the most vulnerable people in the world increasingly exposed to the harrowing consequences of climate change. For some it may already be too late. Low lying island States, such as the Maldives are already doomed to disappear under the rising sea tides. Thousands of vulnerable people in countries like the Philippines have already succumb to storms of increasing intensity. Unless we act now as many as one hundred million sub-Saharan Africans will die due to the adverse effects of climate change. Politicians and corporations have benefited from almost two centuries of over-exploitation of our planet now continue to obstinately defend these ill-gotten gains, leaving others less powerful to bear the deadly consequences. It is hard to see how this can be called anything, but another failure of capitalism.