Time to topple Old King Coal

A tradition for the Scottish Hogmanay is to bring a lump of coal when first-footing to signify that the house will keep warm, bring comfort and be safe for coming New Year. Sadly like many of the old ways, modern times no longer give the symbolism any positive meaning.

Experts warn coal use is growing unsustainably and coal prices are likely to stay low over the next five years, according to the International Energy Agency. Coal will likely overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017, and without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change. It forecasts rising demand for the cheap fuel from India and other Asian countries, with global coal use on an upwards march to hit a record 9 billion tonnes by 2019. Burning coal emits soot, mercury, sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxides – pollutants that are associated with lung and heart disease that threatens to cause needless deaths and rampant greenhouse gas emissions unless the international community backs low carbon development, experts warned. Coal-fired power plants account for just 40% of global electricity production, but they are responsible for more than 70% of its emissions. “We have heard many pledges and policies aimed at mitigating climate change, but over the next five years they will mostly fail to arrest the growth in coal demand,” said IEA chief Maria van der Hoeven. He stressed that despite its “undeniable” contribution to energy access, coal use was “simply unsustainable” in its current form.

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China is set to remain the world’s biggest coal consumer, with demand unlikely to peak this decade. Its neighbours will follow, with India overtaking the US to second place in the consumption table. “India wants everyone to have electricity, and coal is the cheapest form of electricity,” Chandra Bhushan, deputy director of the Centre for Science and Environment in Delhi, explained. That comes at a cost to the climate. Coal plants emit roughly twice the carbon dioxide of gas-fired plants for the same electricity output.

Efforts to keep global warming below the 2 degrees Celsius warming threshold will very likely fail and one of the reasons is that worldwide coal consumption continues to rise. In the entire text of the recent Lima climate change statement there is only one mention of “fossil fuels” – regarding a proposal to phase out “fossil fuel subsidies” – and there are only general mentions of “reductions in high-carbon investments.” No mention at all is made of the need to limit extractive industries. There is no reference at all in the text to the need to change our current patterns of production and consumption. There is no proposal for a strong compliance mechanism for climate change mitigation commitments. What happens if a big polluter fails to cut emissions on time and damages a vulnerable country is not considered in the text. No mention is made of a mechanism to demand and sanction governments and corporations for their inaction. All the options in the text consider only processes of review or assessment. Since 1999, the EU’s top 10 countries have spent €78bn (£62bn) in fossil fuel subsidies, according to Climate Action Network and CIDSE, an alliance of Catholic charities. The five biggest fossil fuel subsidisers were Germany (€47.5bn), the UK (€12.8bn), France (€7.6bn), Spain (€5.8bn) and Poland (€4.2bn).

Governments and the UN are increasingly controlled by corporate interests, which are undermining crucial climate policies and promoting mechanisms “that will allow them to profit from the climate crisis, while expanding the extraction of dirty energy”, argues a report by Friends of the Earth International, the Transnational Institute (TNI) and the Corporate Europe Observatory. The report also accuses Anglo American, which has investments in Brazil, Chile and Peru, of “spinning a web of influence” to ensure the longest possible future for coal production, a major source of greenhouse gases. Anglo American is a member of trade associations and lobby groups, including Euromines, the International Council on Mining and Metals, the International Energy Agency Clean Coal Centre, the UN Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the International Chamber of Commerce, which enjoy privileged access to governments and advocate market-based mechanisms and geo-engineering technology. The World Health Organisation set a global precedent against corporate lobbyists when it took action to ensure the tobacco industry had no role in public health policymaking.

 “Businesses are not short of a voice. But it is not their solutions that will take us out of this mess, it is people’s solutions. And people’s solutions are what need to be seen.” said Corporate Europe Observatory campaigner Pascoe Sabido.

Physics is inevitable: if you put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the planet warms, and as the planet warms, various kinds of chaos and ruin are let loose. Politics, on the other hand, is not inevitable. We need to end the age of fossil fuels. We have the solutions in wind, solar, tidal and other technologies but these are only solutions if they're implemented and the old carbon-emitting ones are phased out or shut down. Many people don't understand what we're up against, because they don't think about the planet and its eco-systems a lot or they don't grasp the delicate, intricate interactions that keep it all running. If everyone understood that we're living in a moment in which the fate of the Earth and of humanity is actually being decided amazing things could happen. Much is happening right now, it is just that they are not adequate in dealing with the ever mounting crises. Some remarkable things have already been achieved and the environmentalist movement has grown in size, power, and sophistication, but it's still nowhere near commensurate with what needs to be done. Many people believe that personal acts in private life are what matters in this crisis but these are in no way the key thing. You are a citizen of this Earth and your responsibility is not private but public, not individual but social. You are part of the system, and nothing less than systemic change will save us. How will we get to where we need to be? No one knows for sure but it requires ending capitalism and that is for certain. Any economic system can be resisted and changed by human beings. Now, everything depends on doing that. 

Marx frequently compared capitalism to a vampire -- a dead thing that parasitically thrives on the blood of the living. To-day, entire genetic lines, DNA the quintessential building block of life itself is being patented and traded on Wall St. Capitalism, a beast so carnivorous that it is devouring its own host: this marvel of a planet along with all life systems upon it.