Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "coal"

Coal Wars: the Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet by Richard Martin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

With good story telling, Martin paints a picture of coal's history—its hearth-warming blessings of cheap energy, its future-bashing dangers, and its slow demise, leaving too many lives disrupted. Meanwhile, our future is seriously compromised by an overdose of coal's signature, carbon dioxide.

Martin shares his personal experiences while visiting the coal country in Appalachia, Wyoming, Colorado, Ohio, and four areas in China. The picture he paints helps us understand the importance coal has played in human energy-dependent history, how it has created mining cultures whose roots go deep in China, Europe and the United States, and now why its demise is raising difficult questions.

The author doesn't preach answers at us. He makes a strong case, however, for recognizing that "market forces are going to kill off coal..." (Other sources have reported that there are more jobs now in solar than in coal, which is being out-sold by cheap gas.)

Three principles, he says, could lead to a "set of solutions." 1) Coal burning must shut down before carbon dioxide does us in: "A sustainable energy strategy requires making choices." 2) "We can't abandon the workers." They need a "GI bill" to provide support while acquiring education and training for new jobs. It would cost only 1 dollar per ton of coal. 3) "the Solution must be global," and the "...only mechanism...a price on carbon... [i.e.] stiff penalties for greenhouse gas emissions."

It's a dilemma not easily faced, for coal gave us the energy to build our technological cultures, and there is still a lot of it available. Like our dependence of gasoline and cars, it's hard to imagine how we could get along without it. But, unlike transportation, the alternatives are not only obvious but urgent, if we are to rescue the future.

The Coal Wars: The Failure of Energy and the Fate of the Planet, by Richard M artin, New York, Palgrave Mackillan, 2015.
This is the story of the demise of the coal industry, the history of coal and its use, and its effects on three or more generations in the U.S. south, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, Ohio and Colorado, some zones in China and in The Ruhr, Germany.

The author notes that “…nostalgia for a vanishing way of life is leading to a form of cannibalism…kids can’t be fed and educated on rage…not all chance entails betrayal…natural gas has become cheaper and easier to use, as has robotics, so jobs are lost in coal country. Economics is changing”

Coal has been used in China since the “Fourth Millennium B.C.” Now its industry is outdated and “inching toward absolute caps on both coal consumption and carbon emissions.” Taoism and Confusion values are both focused on protection of the natural world, so there is hope that China’s dependence on coal and the damage done to these values may end some day.

In the U. S., the battle may center in Ohio, and in Europe on the Ruhr. In any case, the author argues that coal may be shut down in the end, but we must not “abandon the workers. Any solution must be global.” The final solution: “…a price on carbon.”

The Coal Wars: The Failure of Energy and the Fate of the Planet, by Richard martin, New York, Palgrave Mackillan, 2015.
This is the story of the demise of the coal industry, the history of coal and its use, and its effects on three or more generations in the U.S. south, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, Ohio and Colorado, some zones in China and in The Ruhr, Germany.

The author notes that “…nostalgia for a vanishing way of life is leading to a form of cannibalism…kids can’t be fed and educated on rage…not all chance entails betrayal…natural gas has become cheaper and easier to use, as has robotics, so jobs are lost in coal country. Economics is changing”

Coal has been used in China since the “Fourth Millennium B.C.” Now its industry is outdated and “inching toward absolute caps on both coal consumption and carbon emissions.” Taoism and Confusion values are both focused on protection of the natural world, so there is hope that China’s dependence on coal and the damage done to these values may end some day.

In the U. S., the battle may center in Ohio, and in Europe on the Ruhr. In any case, the author argues that coal may be shut down in the end, but we must not “abandon the workers. Any solution must be global.” The final solution: “…a price on carbon.”