Coal on Three Continents

I wrote before about how coal is the fuel of the 21st century. In the last week the New York Times has had articles looking at coal in China, Europe and the US.

In the US, we are using a billion tons of coal a year and that looks to increase.

In Europe, due to worries about gas from Russia and the phasing out of some nuclear plants, it is back to using coal.

In China, their economic boom is driven by cheap coal which is causing environmental and health problems. And 200 million tons of coal — more than was burned in all of Japan last year — are consumed by raging underground fires that are sometimes started by lightning and sometimes ignited by mining accidents.