The Promise and Problems of Those Dirty Black Rocks

With oil prices soaring and the Middle East in turmoil, it may be some comfort to know that the United States is sitting on gargantuan reserves of fossil fuel. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s coal.

Just how bad is laid out emphatically in “Big Coal,” Jeff Goodell’s compelling indictment of one of the country’s biggest, most powerful and most antiquated industries. Coal, he argues, is bad for the economy, bad for public health and especially bad for the environment, yet its future looks quite bright. It is relatively cheap. It is plentiful. And Americans, who get half their electric power from coal-burning generators, are addicted to it. As of 2005, more than 120 new coal-burning plants were either planned or under construction in the United States.

“We may not like to admit it,” Mr. Goodell writes, “but our shiny white iPod economy is propped up by dirty black rocks.”
The United States has enjoyed a free energy ride for a century and more, and the coal companies have made out like bandits all along the way. Now the day of reckoning has come. We — and, in a just world, they — are going to pay a price, either today or tomorrow.

A NY Times story at Climate Ark