o 

 a. 



a. 



TO 



(J 



as much. Coal is what's fueling China's eco- 

 nomic boom: 70 percent of the nation s ener- 

 gy comes from coal, and Chinese leaders have 

 made it clear that economic growth is their 

 number one priority. 



The cost of China's replay of the western 

 Industrial Revolution is obvious. The World 

 Health Organization estimates that in East 

 Asia (predominantly China and South Korea) 

 355,000 people a year die from the effects of 

 urban outdoor air pollution. All over China, 

 limestone buildings are dissolving in the acidic 

 air, and acid rain is falling on a third of the 

 country, crippling agricultural production. 

 Not surprisingly, pollution is becoming a fo- 

 cus of political unrest. 



The C0 2 released by China's ravenous con- 

 sumption of coal poses a grave threat — not 

 just within China's borders but to the entire 

 world. The Kyoto Protocol, now ratified by 

 162 nations (though, notably, not by the U.S. 

 and Australia), calls for cutting greenhouse- 

 gas emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 lev- 

 els by 2012. The coal-fired power plants that 

 China plans to build by 2012 will generate 

 more than twice that amount of greenhouse gases 

 (as a developing nation, China need not reduce its 

 emissions even though it ratified the treaty). By 2025, 

 if China continues down its current path, it will over- 

 take the U.S. as the world's largest greenhouse-gas 

 polluter — and the chances of avoiding drastic climate 

 change will become virtually zero. 



In spite of such dire projections, China has done a 

 lot to clean up its act. It has banned the use of coal 

 for heating and cooking in cities such as Beijing and 

 Shanghai; it has moved coal-tired power plants out 

 of urban areas and replaced them with plants that burn 

 natural gas; it has tightened energy-efficiency re- 

 quirements on new buildings; and it is building one 

 of the world's largest offshore wind farms. In some 

 ways, China has already leapfrogged ahead of the U.S. 

 In 2005 the Chinese government announced that by 

 2020, renewable sources would generate 15 percent 

 of the country's energy. Whether that prediction is 

 an aspiration or a firm commitment remains to be 

 seen, but in 2005 a similar provision was stripped out 

 of the U.S. energy bill. China also has passed vehicle 

 fuel-efficiency standards that are much stricter than 

 the ones in the U.S. But even with all those measures, 

 China still has a long way to go. 



H China 



H United States 

 L_! Other developing countries 

 Bl Other developed countries 



* Billions of tons of CO? emitted 

 over plants' operating lives 



700 



600 



500 



~ B 400 



8 1 

 "o 2, 



£ S> 

 .<*> 

 o* 

 Q- 



300 



200 



100 



I 



Total 

 238 



207 



138 



2003-2010 



104 



2011-2020 



2021-2030 



T 



he world faces two enormous challenges in the 

 coming years: the end of cheap oil and the ar- 

 rival of global warming. Coal may provide a solution 

 to the first challenge, but only by exacerbating the 



Source: Natural Resources Defense Council, from forecasts by the U.S. Energy 

 Information Administration and the International Energy Agency 



Projected new coal-fired generating capacity is shown. The total 

 capacity is the equivalent of 1,357 new thousand-megawatt plants, 

 which would emit more C0 2 over their operating lives — 572 billion 

 tons — than all the C0 2 emitted by all human coal burning before 2003. 



second. Any serious effort to address global warm- 

 ing must target greenhouse-gas emissions by coal- 

 powered plants, particularly in the U.S. and China. 

 Americans can argue about the best way to do this — 

 ratify the Kyoto treaty and persuade China to adopt 

 its emissions limits, tax C0 2 emissions, provide big- 

 ger subsidies to clean-power development, man- 

 date that new coal plants use IGCC technology and 

 carbon sequestration, or give away free bicycles — 

 but do it we must. 



The biggest impediment to such changes is the 

 idea that Americans are dependent on the very thing 

 that is killing us. That claim is made all the time: 

 Passing laws that limit CO, emissions, or require 

 cleaning up dirty coal plants, or restrict mountain- 

 top-removal mining, it is argued, will cause the price 

 of electricity to skyrocket and the economy to col- 

 lapse. And it is true that reforming the industry could 

 cause electricity prices to rise, and bring genuine 

 economic hardship to some areas. But the costs and 

 consequences of global warming are simply too high 

 to continue the indulgence in cheap coal. 



Blind faith m technology is unwarranted; but 

 people can certainly figure out less destructive ways 

 to create and consume the energy the world needs. 

 Ultimately, the most valuable fuel for the future is 

 not coal or oil, but imagination and ingenuity. □ 



This article was adapted from Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind 

 America's Energy Future, by Jeff Goodell, which is being published in 

 June by Houghton Mifflin Company. 



May 2006 NATURAI HISTORY 



4 1 



