Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
certain to dampen enthusiasm for the 'primitive accumulation' strategy of securing
oil through direct invasion. Instead, nations and multinational energy partners are
likely to recommit to a diversifi ed portfolio approach of direct investment, infl u-
ence-buying, and military exchanges such as China is currently pursuing in Africa
(Carmody and Owusu, 2007). Such strategies, however, are embedded in a global
oil marketplace that, come a post-peak era, will be far harder to manage and
navigate than before.
Whereas global oil reserves are localised and peaking, coal reserves are wide-
spread and abundant (fi gure 31.4). If extracted at 1995 rates, global measured
recoverable reserves would last 250 years (Smil 1999). Most coal (90 percent) is
consumed in the country of origin, and so too the politics of coal have typically
operated within national boundaries, but potently so - think of US coal miners
contesting virtual indentured servitude in 19th and 20th century 'company store'-era
Appalachia, or the signal importance of Thatcher's defeat of coal unions in restruc-
turing the UK economy in the 1980s. Climate change, however, is bringing coal
into the international arena, not as a matter of production access, as with oil, but
instead as a matter of regulating consumption, because coal is dirtier and emits 20
percent more carbon than oil and 60 percent more than natural gas. The imminent
threat from coal is that, unless curbed by carbon reduction policies, its use will
continue accelerating because it is comparatively cheap and simple to use for electri-
cal power generation.
Coal-fi red power plants are often sited in rural areas near mining operations that
increasingly use
mountain top removal
techniques that are every bit as ecologically
subtle as the name suggests. Resulting power is than transmitted over power lines
hundreds of miles to urban consumption centres. China's coal and power industry
is quite ineffi cient (Xie and Kuby, 1997), yet a new coal-burning power plant, with
the capacity to serve all the households in Dallas, opens in China every week to ten
days producing not just GHGs, but also acid rain and choking smog responsible
for an estimated 400,000 premature deaths annually (Bradsher and Barboza, 2006).
In the USA, 150 new coal plants were in the proposal phase as of 2006 (Madsen
and Sargent, 2006). The pace of future investment in such plants, each with a
potential lifespan of decades, will impact both national politics in places like China,
where smog is increasingly contested by a nascent environmental movement, and
global climate-change progress. Prospects for capturing and sequestering carbon
emissions underground, though much touted by coal and electrical power industries,
appear limited, at best.
Climate Change and the Politics of Energy Sustainability
The hegemony of fossil fuels remains fi rmly anchored in strong, if crisis-prone,
networks of capital, power, and sunk investment. Climate change concerns, however,
accelerated by public concern over the Iraq war and higher energy prices, have
engendered a sophisticated, multi-scalar sustainable energy advocacy network. It
has succeeded in creating the rudimentary international and local institutions and
policy frameworks with which to mount a serious challenge to the ever-upward
spiral of oil, gas and coal consumption. The network dynamics and strategies of
this movement are critical to reconfi guring how the roles of states, markets, and
civil society are conceptualised and institutionalised in the pursuit of sustainable
development.
