From the front page of this morning's Washington Post, Coal Can't Fill World's Burning Appetite:From the front page of this morning's Washington Post, Coal Can't Fill World's Burning Appetite:
Big swings in the prices of coal and other commodities are common. But while the price of coal has slipped slightly in recent weeks, many analysts and companies are wondering whether high prices are here to stay. [...] If high prices last, that would raise the cost of U.S. electricity, half of which is generated by coal-fired powered plants.
Expensive or not, coal is almost always dirtier to burn than are other fossil fuels. Although its use accounts for a quarter of world energy consumption, it generates 39 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. Climate change concerns could lead to legislation in many countries imposing higher costs on those who burn coal, forcing utilities and factories to become more efficient and curtail its use. Climatologists warn that without technology to capture and store carbon dioxide emissions, burning more coal would be disastrous.
The more you learn about coal, the more you realize Virginia is some sort of Coal Bizarro World. Everywhere else it's dirty, but here it's clean! Everywhere else it's scarce and getting more expensive, but here it's cheap and abundant! Everywhere else they're anticipating carbon cap legislation with plans for clean energy, but here we act like greenhouse gas pollution will be free forever.
And everywhere else, our governor is seen as doing the bidding of his energy donors, but here we know there's still time for Gov. Tim Kaine to prove them wrong. If you haven't done so yet, take a minute right now to tell Gov. Kaine to do the right thing.
The point is that coal, far from being pure carbon, is loaded with impurities. When you burn millions of tons of coal, you blow significant amounts of uranium, mercury and all manner of heavy metals into the air. It ends up in people's lungs, in drinking water, in farm topsoil. And that's just the immediate problem; it says nothing about the incompletely burned hydrocarbons we also get to inhale, let alone the greenhouse gases.
I'm not tickled with the thought of higher electric bills, but I say, bring on the higher coal prices. The higher they go, the more people will take conservation and alternative energy seriously. We may even do so in Virginia some day.