The Conversation (0)
Last week, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told the World Coal Association’s International Coal & Climate Summit that the coal industry that it must “change rapidly and dramatically.” Thus far, the response from coal industry members has been positive.
In a move that raised eyebrows across the globe, last week Poland hosted both the World Coal Association’s International Coal & Climate Summit and COP19, a United Nations (UN) conference on climate change.
Now that both meetings are over, it’s time to take stock. Did the two groups clash? Will Poland — or “Coaland” as some have taken to calling it — ever regain the respect of environmentalists who derided it for hosting both gatherings?
The answers to those questions are more than a little surprising.
Critics speak out
As mentioned, environmentalists were not happy to hear that both the Coal & Climate Summit and COP19 would be happening in the same place at overlapping times.
At first glance, their annoyance seems justifiable. After all, as The Guardian points out, coal is “the most polluting of fossil fuels,” and “seems to be an enemy” of the UN conference’s aims.
However, if Marcin Korolec, Poland’s environment minister, is to be believed, “seems” is the key word here.
Explaining his country’s thought process in double-booking the two meetings, Korolec said there is “no place for confrontation, isolation and selection” at the COP19 talks and noted that it is “very strange, if not worrying” to see opposition to the coal conference, as per The Guardian.
That’s because, in his opinion, the two organizations’ goals are not as disparate as they may seem.
Figueres calls for change
That idea played out at a talk given at the Coal & Climate Summit by Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty whose aim is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
Addressing coal conference attendees, Figueres said that “[c]oal must change rapidly and dramatically for everyone’s sake,” because “[i]f we continue to meet energy needs as we have in the past, we will overshoot the internationally agreed goal to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius,” according to Bloomberg. She suggested, among other things, that coal industry executives make sure that new plants have the technology to capture and store carbon dioxide.
Interestingly, rather than responding negatively to Figueres’ speech, the watching coal industry members applauded her, according to DeSmogBlog’s Brendan DeMelle. And, speaking to DeMelle, Figueres said that the coal industry “accepts the science of climate change” and is aware of “the need for a major shift in the deployment of [its] capital.”
Indeed, Milton Catelin, chief executive of the World Coal Association, is quoted by Bloomberg as saying “[w]e can’t turn a blind eye on [the] climate impact of our industry.”
Not exactly the rigid, pro-coal stance that environmentalists seem to have been expecting.
UN talks not fruitful
Meanwhile, word is that COP19 talks were not particularly successful.
The problem largely seems to have stemmed from the fact that too many topics were up for discussion, with the result being that the conference “nearly collapsed in overtime before agreements were watered down to a point where no country was promising anything concrete,” as per the Associated Press.
Speaking to the news outlet, European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard admitted, “[m]aybe it would be time now to think if there should be themes for the conferences so that not each conference is about everything.”
The takeaway
While it is easy to dismiss coal industry members as being against the environment and praise environmentalists for speaking out against climate change, Poland’s two conferences show that the situation is much more nuanced than that — the coal industry is by no means the only obstacle to environmentalists’ quest to curb climate change, and in fact many of its members are in favor of greening the fuel.
With coal set to become the most dominant fuel source by 2020, it thus seems reasonable to hope that coal’s detractors will not discourage the two groups from working together moving forward.
Securities Disclosure: I, Charlotte McLeod, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
Related reading:
Coal is Here to Stay, and That’s a Good Thing: Milton Catelin