Even coal-burning has become dramatically cleaner over the last 200 years. A simple technical fix added to coal plants in developed nations after 1950 reduced dangerous particulate matter by 99 percent. High-temperature coal plants are nearly as clean as natural gas plants, save for their higher carbon emissions. Natural gas is still, as a rule, superior to coal, for inherently physical reasons. But on the question of air pollution, the extent to which coal plants have become far cleaner is remarkable.74 None of this is to say that burning coal is “good,” only that it is, on most human and
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