Climate Change Weekly # 542 — More Ways Coal Improves the Economy and the Environment
By H. Sterling Burnett
Published May 2, 2025
IN THIS ISSUE:
More Ways Coal Improves the Economy and the Environment
United Nations IPCC Hid the Medieval Warm Period
More Ways Coal Improves the Economy and the Environment
Since misanthropic environmentalists and their Western-world-hating fellow travelers in academia and in the political realm discovered climate alarm as a fashionable and effective way to hamper economic growth and constrain consumerism, coal—long the foundation of industrial development and the modern power grid—became the ugliest of stepchildren in energy policy discussions.
To be clear, burning coal to generate electric power does directly produce more carbon dioxide (CO2) and traditional air pollutants than other electric-power generating sources do. However, emissions of pollutants from modern power plants pose no health problems at current levels, which leaves us with CO2.
CO2 is the molecule of life, the foundation of life on Earth, necessary for plant photosynthesis, and thus all terrestrial life. It has been declining in the atmosphere for billions of years, and during the last ice age it dipped to just a few tens of parts per million above the level necessary for continued photosynthesis. CO2 levels rebounded after the Earth recovered from the most recent glacial period, and since the Industrial Revolution human industrial activities have added CO2 to the atmosphere. The increase in CO2 has benefited plants, animals, and humans alike and is thousands of times below any threshold for threatening human health directly.
Based on speculative forecasts about the secondary or indirect affects of CO2 contributing to a slight warming of the world in the latter part of the twentieth century, radical environmentalists and others who could profit in some way from transitioning America’s economy to an alternative if less effective, efficient, and productive energy system seized on fears of climate change to restrict CO2 emissions sharply and rapidly. Because coal-fueled power plants, which made up almost half of electricity generation at the time, were the largest single identifiable source of such emissions in the United States, coal use became the first target of the deindustrialization crusade.
https://heartland.org/opinion/climate-change-weekly-542-more-ways-coal-improves-the-economy-and-the-environment/
