Coal Transitions? Geopolitics, Climate Change, and the Materiality of Energy

• In Event: 41020 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Climate and Culture

Abstract

The world burned more coal in 2024 than ever before. What happened to coal transitions? This paper argues that understanding this problematic reality requires a long term material and political economic analysis of coal, its materiality, and its role in geopolitics in the 2020s. While the evidence is somewhat mixed, prospects for coal transitions in the U.S., China and India in the short and medium terms are not promising.

Author

• Paul S. Ciccantell, Western Michigan University