Climate Change Will Supersede Everything
Why should climate change be included in a Department of Defense report on security developments in relation to the People’s Republic?
Why should climate change be included in a Department of Defense report on security developments in relation to the People’s Republic?
Government officials and state-owned energy enterprises in China are currently debating another wave of coal power investment, despite a severely diminished business case for the technology.
We found that if China uses the most cost-effective renewable energy resources, it could generate more than 60% of its electricity from “non-fossil” sources by 2030 – including wind, solar, hydro and nuclear – at a cost that is around 10% lower than under business-as-usual.
A current book asks Will China Save the Plamet? The author, Barbara Finamore, served as the China representative of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Her story gives first-hand material less for answering this question than for showing how a big country can move from defensive nationalism to global leadership in starting the transition to a green economy.
As long as mainstream economic institutions remain blind to the fundamental biophysical basis of economics, they will remain in the dark about the core structural reasons why the current configuration of global capitalism is so prone to recurrent crisis and collapse.
To understand the trajectory of the world’s energy transition effort, we have to understand what’s happening in China.
The surge in global coal consumption, driven largely by China and India, has climate scientists deeply worried. But environmentalists and a growing number of financial experts say that alarm over global warming may halt the seemingly inevitable rise of the coal industry.