Drawing on historical and contemporary evidence, I argue that these two threats are symptomatic of a growing structural imbalance in all economies, which is how nature is exploited to create wealth and how it is shared among the population. The root of this imbalance is that natural capital is underpriced, and hence overly exploited, whereas human capital is insufficient to meet demand, thus encouraging relatively higher wages for skilled labor and resulting wealth inequality.

Joy Chen is sitting on a bench outside a new museumin Harbin devoted to the medical atrocities committed by Japan's Unit 731 in Manchuria during World War II, trying to absorb what she learned inside: After the war, the United States covered up Japan's biological warfare research on humans, allowing the perpetrators to escape punishment and to prosper.

The New York Times has recently carried two important stories on China's coal consumption, indicating that the situation is even more serious than previously appeared to be the case. On November 3 the NYT carried a front page report that China has revised its estimates of how much coal it has been burning, and concluding that its carbon emissions have been higher than had been previously reported and assumed (“China burns much more coal than reported, complicating climate talks” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/world/asia/china-burns-much-more-coal-than-reported-complicating-climate-talks.html?_r=0), Nov 3 2015). This was then widely taken up, with the emphasis invariably on the “new fact” that China's coal burning is higher than previously reported. Then on November 11 the NYT carried a second story concerning a glut of new coal-fired power plant approvals, with the implication that again carbon emissions were likely to be higher in future than previously anticipated (“Glut of coal-fired plants casts doubt on China's energy priorities” (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/asia/china-coal-power-energy-policy.html?_r=0), Nov 11 2015) This second story followed similar reports from both Deutsche Bank and from Greenpeace East Asia. Given the global significance of energy and emissions data from China, we explore some of the causes and implications of these developments.