THE CARBON WAR

Things are coming together just as things are falling apart 255
the atmosphere. Offsetting US electricity-sector emissions alone would require
1,500 such sites.
Funds worth $2.6 trillion have now pledged divest from coal. The value
of funds shifting away from coal, oil or gas has increased fifty-fold over the
past year. The total value of the holdings that these investors are selling is
as-yet uncompiled, but one research firm uses a sample of just 7 per cent of
the investors involved to estimate the whole group having sold, or promising
to sell, some $6 billion worth of fossil fuel investments.
The impact on coal firms is clear everywhere. “Mines in America’s Coal
Country Just Sold for a Total of Nothing,” Bloomberg reports. A group of
Appalachian surface and underground mines has had to be given away for free.
The company I am engaged with today also numbers ministries and
entire governments among its clients. This compounds the difficulty of their
own strategic positioning. It is quite clear that front-running governments on
climate change are far ahead of where they were just a few years ago. Right now,
as I speak, the Pope is visiting President Obama in Washington. President Xi
Jinping will follow him in a few days time. What will come from these meetings?
It is a safe bet that the US President won’t be contemplating backward steps in
his intended legacy issue.
The US and Chinese have just announced joint action on climate by
cities, states and provinces. Eleven Chinese cities, with collective emissions
equal to Japan’s, have set out targets for faster cuts in carbon emissions than
the national target. The California Assembly has just passed a 50% renewable
portfolio standard by 2030, up from the present 33% by end 2020. In a landmark
Senate bill the voting splits 51-26. A 50% energy-efficiency target in buildings
by 2030 also passes.
Should the Democrats win the next national election, backsliding from
all this seems unlikely. Hillary Clinton has come out in opposition to the
Keystone Pipeline. She now says it is “a distraction from the important work
we have to do to combat climate change.” At the same time, Republicans seem
to be losing support at the margins. Seventeen of them break ranks with party
leaders in a call for climate change action. At least 10 House Republicans sign
on to a resolution endeavouring to put pressure on presidential candidates.
The European Union, meanwhile, professes itself united for an ambitious,
binding agreement at the Paris talks. Ministers agree that 5 year reviews and
a target of climate neutrality in the second half of the century should be in
the treaty.