I’ve been doing a bit of pondering today and I started feeling quite sorry for the guys in the coal industry.
That’s a bit random you might think, well not really. It’s a well known fact that of all fossil fuels used in the industrialised world, coal is by far the worst of all. As a result, the industry is being constantly attacked by the likes of us who would like to see the world free from those little blocks of pure sun energy captured millions of years ago,
See it wasn’t always like this for them. Coal was once loved and respected as the stuff hard working men would risk their lives to mine out of the ground for the benefit of society. Even in the 80’s when all those coal mines in the UK and France got shut down, there persisted a nostaligia about miners and the glamorous image they projected. And it was rendered in songs, movies, amusement parks even, though in far more subtle form. It reached a point where it wasn’t so much the coal that mattered but the mining activity itself.
But it’s all industrialised now. Machines digging coal that can be burnt to run more machines, spewing fumes in lethal doses out into the atmosphere, creating a future for the next generation that seems almost as black as that which is taken out of the ground.
So why is it that people cling so hard to their dirty blocks of carbon? I’ve seen lobbyist talking nonsense on TV advert to push for this chimera called “clean coal”. I’ve read about corporations so afraid to lose their market share they went as far as writing fake letters to US house representatives claiming to be from various charities and associations. Is it the cheap and easy access and unwillingness to break the status quo because change is scary[1]? Or is there a more malevolent aspect to it? That last one, I’m unwilling to consider from a purely human perspective but there is certainly a lot of destruction going on.
And it’s not just the US, here in Europe the largest coal-fired power plant ever built is to spend money on “carbon permits” to cope with demand instead of trying to clean up here and now [2]. It’s coal fired of course and in due course they plant to fit it with Carbon Capture and Storage technology but until that technology is workable and affordable it’ll have to spew and spew some more until it stops snowing in Scandinavia and the Carpathians have lost the last drop of frozen water residing in their summit.
Coal isn’t cool or glamorous anymore. It’s dirty, unsafe and in some circumstances even lethal. If you’re in the US and a tiny bit open minded, you might want to check this out:
[1] Makes me wonder how they see themselves in the morning with their unshaven beard…
[2] Belchtow, Poland, what an appropriate name…
