The released carbon, meanwhile, enters the atmosphere, causing global warming (not to mention coal’s contribution to the smog and particulate pollution that have plagued urban society since the Industrial Revolution, afflicting untold numbers of people with respiratory, heart, and other diseases). Given this legacy, our task is not small, but it is simple: rather than a society of grave robbers, we need to become a society of life amplifiers, deriving our energy directly from the elements that sustain life.
