Follow this logic, if you will.
1. Half of the electricity in the United States is produced by burning long-dead plants transformed by heat and pressure over the eons into a hard black substance known as coal.
2. Burning coal releases more carbon that any other fuel per unit of energy produced.
3. We need to reduce the amount of carbon we're releasing into the atmosphere by at least 70 percent over the next century just to cut the expected global temperature rise by a half.
Therefore, we need to stop burning coal, and soon.This is the argument that NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen has been making at every forum to which he's invited. It usually goes something like this:
Most of the carbon dioxide from oil and gas usage is emitted by small sources (i.e., vehicle tailpipes) where it's impractical to capture it. Nor does it seem likely that Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, and other major oil producers will decide to leave their oil in the ground. Therefore, the only practical way to prevent carbon dioxide levels from exceeding 450 ppm [parts per million] is to phase out coal power except at plants where carbon emissions are captured and stored.
Image Credit: arbyreed, Creative Commons.
Because we're already at 387 ppm, we don't have a lot of time. Hansen's schedule goes something like this. First, the United States and the rest of the developed world must stop building now, developing countries need to follow suit within 10 years, and then all the coal-fired plants much be shut down by 2030.
Think about that. America will have to make do without half of its electricity by 2020 or find a new source for it. Sounds like Al Gore's challenge of 100% renewable electricity generation in a decade. I can think of nothing that better illustrates just how serious we've let the climate crisis become. It dwarfs the hardships that comes with a recession, or even a depression.
And yet, coal-fired plants are still under construction in this country. Even Duke Energy, the CEO of which has publicly acknowledged the threat posed by coal, is building a new one, just east of Charlotte, N.C. It will cost $2.4 billion and produce 800 megawatts of power and 300 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. It will take decades for Duke to recoup its investment, even without a price on carbon, which everyone knows is in the proverbial pipeline.
There are some signs of hope. Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sibelius seems determined to do whatever's in her executive powers to prevent the coal industry from growing in her state. But the coal lobby remains among the most powerful in Washington.
In case you were wondering, it's not a question of technology. We could, for example, cover a few hundred square miles of southwestern desert with off-the-shelf solar panels, store the day-time excess power as pressurized air in underground caverns and release at night, string thousands of miles of high-voltage DC cables from there to where the electricity is needed, and supply 69% of the country's electricity, all for about $10 billion a year over the next 40 years. (See this vision in Scientific American.)