THE CARBON WAR

Guilt and disruption 241
ceiling. All but one of the main trackers of global surface temperature are now
above 1°C. Glaciers are retreating worldwide at a historically unprecedented
rate. The World Glacier Monitoring Service reports annual ice loss now at 2–3
times the 20 th century average.
President Obama continues to hear the ticking. He has imposed the
most far-reaching carbon restrictions on the US power sector yet. His latest
announcement targets a 32% cut for power-sector emissions-cuts by 2030, and
encourages bypassing of gas, favouring renewables.
US oil and gas drillers are furious that Obama’s plan gives solar and
wind a chance to compete. Yet the inventor of the device they commonly use
for measuring industrial methane leakage reports that a systemic fault in his
invention means leaks may greatly exceed estimates, cancelling out natural
gas’s supposed greenhouse-gas heat-trapping benefit over coal.
My tea companion’s company has a coal business. It is not doing at all well.
Hardly surprising: the second biggest US coal producer, Alpha Resources, went
bankrupt recently. It was $3.3bn in debt. With “clean coal” ever more clearly
an expensive and thus-far impractical pipe dream, analysts expect that other
giants, such as Peabody and Arch Coal, will soon go bankrupt too. Investors
are fleeing. “Do you really want to be the last coal investor?” asks Henry de
Castries, chair of giant insurer Axa. He reports no negative shareholder reaction
to Axa’s sell off of coal shares.
As for the coal industry’s last ditch argument that coal can cure poverty,
even the World Bank has rejected that notion. The World Bank climate change
envoy has said that continued use of coal is exacting a heavy cost on the world’s
poorest countries.
Things are little better for oil. Since the oil price peaked above $100 in
June 2014, 157 energy companies have lost market capitalisation amounting
to $1.3 trillion. The amount producers are now set to lose in the next 3 years,
relative to figures a year ago, is fully $4.4 trillion. Deflation is spreading through
the global oil industry. Oil groups have shelved $200bn in new projects. 46 big
oil and gas projects have been deferred. Only a handful of major projects have
been fully approved. Deepwater drill ships worth $300 million apiece sit idling
at anchor, burning $70,000 a day waiting for low oil prices to abate, turning the
Caribbean into what Bloomberg calls an expensive parking lot. The oil price
collapse is hammering the big energy groups.
So my question for my guilt-stricken energy-incumbency companion is
simple. Why don’t his colleagues change course? Why do they keep defending
the status quo so trenchantly, when those of them who are Catholic have been