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Coal and climate change
Author(s) -
Edwards Gareth A. S.
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: climate change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.678
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1757-7799
pISSN - 1757-7780
DOI - 10.1002/wcc.607
Subject(s) - coal , climate change , futures contract , politics , consumption (sociology) , context (archaeology) , political economy of climate change , situated , natural resource economics , coal mining , political science , work (physics) , political economy , economics , economy , sociology , engineering , geography , social science , law , geology , mechanical engineering , archaeology , artificial intelligence , financial economics , computer science , waste management , oceanography
This overview adopts a critical social science perspective to examine the state of play and potential futures for coal in the context of climate change. It introduces key trends in coal consumption, production and trade, before reviewing the relevant literature. Finding surprisingly little literature directly focused on coal and climate change, it appraises existing work and highlights key areas for future research. In addition to established literatures on the situated politics of coal and the political economy of coal, new work calling for demand side policies to be supplemented with supply side policies highlights the increasing importance of normative contestations in driving debates over coal. This suggests that scholars must engage much more directly with climate change as an issue, and particularly with the place of coal in a just transition. Because of coal's mammoth contribution to climate change and the complex political economy which drives its production and consumption, it is likely that coal will remain at the center of difficult questions about the relationship between climate action and development for quite some time. This article is categorized under: Climate and Development > Decoupling Emissions from Development