FT's Nick Butler: The reports are false – coal burns on

Nick Butler writes on the FT website and interesting note on the future of coal.

Writing on the headlines and recent divestment campaigns,

If you have Oxford University, Michael Bloomberg and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund against you what hope can there be?

May I note an OxCARRE paper [ox.ac.uk] by Tony Venables and Paul Collier? In fact, he notes, how dominant coal still is, and likely to remain given the dependence of it in China and India.

He concludes that only a cheap renewable energy would be able to displace coal. That would imply serious energy put into science and research. Closing,

In the meantime, it would be prudent to start some serious consideration of the question of adaptation to the changes in climate that begin to look inevitable.