To Lower Emissions Climate Coalitions Should Start Buying Fossil Fuel Rights & Not Use Them

Herry Lawford /CC BY 2.0 Coal mining in Mongolia. Back in 2009, during the heady days of COP15, when it seemed for a brief instant that we might have a global climate agreement, Friends of the Earth's Nnimmo Bassey was fond of addressing crowds and reporters with the ever-quotable sentence, "Leave the coal in the hole." He'd then go on to have equally quotable remarks about not using other fossil fuels (though apparently less memorable, because I can't now...). Now, over two years later, in more somber times, when few people don't acknowledge that a global climate deal that will actually do anything to stop warming is far off, a new study has been published that, in its way, says something similar. Global climate groups are overlooking an effective way to limit the amount of fossil fuels that get extracted from the Earth, burned, and further climate change, rapidly approac...