Coal Is the Enemy of the Human Race: Question Begging Edition

grist.org

I swear, I don't mean to just rant about stupid coal articles every day. But people keep writing stupid coal articles. I'm like Pavlov's dog at this point -- they say stupid things, I bash them. Good boy!

The latest is this interview in Wired's Planet Earth blog with Jeremy Carl, who researches how to clean up coal. Consider the very first bit of the intro:

Coal is dirty. But coal is driving the U.S., Chinese and Indian economies. And therefore, coal is not going away.

Yeeeaaargh! That makes no goddamn sense!

"Humanity uses a lot of coal; therefore, humanity will keep using a lot of coal." Please explain to me where the f*ck "therefore" comes from in that sentence. Is there an argument tucked in there that I missed? Because to me it looks like straightforward question begging -- after all, the whole question at issue is whether we should continue using lots of coal. You might conclude at the end of an argument that we must keep using lots of coal, but you can't assume it up front and pretend that doing so is an argument. You have to actually, you know, have the argument.

Then there's this chestnut:

WN: But there's got to be good things about coal.

Carl: It's cheap.

But look -- the price of the mineral itself is irrelevant. Nobody wants coal, after all, they want electricity services: warm showers and cold beer, as the man put it. If it was only fuel price that mattered, then solar would win every time, since however cheap coal may be, sunlight is free.

The relevant comparison is this: the cost of end-use electricity services delivered by coal-fired power plants vs. the cost of end-use electricity services delivered by some combination of renewables and efficiency. That's the only cost comparison that matters.

The fuel cost is only a tiny part of that comparison. You also have the capital costs to build plants in compliance with all relevant regulations, the operation and maintenance costs of running them, the transmission and distribution costs of carrying electricity over wires, and -- if you really want to be a hippie -- the cost of the externalities created along the way.

If you make the relevant comparison in the U.S., coal is not cheap. Even without CO2 regulations or other externalities priced in, just with Clean Air Act compliance, new coal is about as expensive as wind or solar thermal, and far more expensive than the equivalent negawatts of efficiency. Include a price on carbon or other externalities and the gap widens.

Since India and China have fewer regulations on coal pollution than the U.S. does, and no regulations on CO2, you might still get a lower number for coal over there, if you exclude externalities. But if you include them ... well, here's a tidbit from a World Bank report on China:

Health costs related to air pollution total $68 billion a year, nearly 4 percent of the country's economic output, the report said. And acid rain has contaminated a third of the country, Sheng Huaren, a senior Chinese parliamentary official, said last year. It is said to destroy some $4 billion worth of crops every year.

That's to say nothing of polluted rivers and political unrest. Factor them in, or factor in the money China would have to spend to clean up coal, and it's not cheap any more. Once more from the top: coal is cheap only insofar as it is given freedom to be filthy.

Of course it's not easy to replace coal with renewables and efficiency. Markets for the latter are, as Bill Clinton keeps saying, undercapitalized, underinformed, and underorganized, in the U.S. and even more so in India and China. It will be a huge undertaking to scale them up to meet the challenge.

Should we focus on scaling them up instead of spending a sh*tload trying to clean up the world's dirtiest energy source? I think so. Others disagree. But either way, you have to argue for your answer. You can't just assume that "coal is not going away" and thus that we have to live with it. That kind of assumption makes an ass out of you and ... well, mostly you.

Comments

[Guitarsandmore]

The first chance we had to really do something about pollution was during the Carter administration when Carter gave rebates for new solar installations. But when Reagan came into office he shut that program down in favor of the coal industry. These right wing guys are always thinking about protecting the "industries" instead of the people that live here and have to breathe the air.

I don"t think the Republicans are going to wake up until the water from the North sea starts smacking them in the face. Seriously, when Hannity sees his house going under water along with the rest of the East Coast it just might wake him up.

The greedy bastards didn"t want to listen then and they won"t listen now. If it"s not part of some business plan than it must not be valid. Perhaps if enough business plans are written for a Solar Industry the idea might catch on. In order to convince these yo yo Republicans, Solar has to be part of some wall street IPO that might make them some money.

[jdm58]

"Coal is not going away" because it is not being mandated by either the government, or the governed. Even in Tennessee and W. Virginia, where many people have to have water trucked in to drink because their own water sources have become so polluted by mountaintop coal mining that it is no longer potable, people argue that their jobs and their lives would be ruined without the mines. The greed that runs our society dictates that we fulfill the desires of the few in the shortterm, regardless of the cost to the many in the longterm. It is why people eat their way to obesity, smoke even though they know it will kill them, do drugs with shared needles, the list goes on. No one wants to own the cause/effect of their own actions. We are a society addicted to getting what we want, now, at any cost. I think the reason more time is given on the airwaves to things like Paris Hilton's latest DUI, or Ellen Degeneres puppy problem than to the effects of global warming is that we can point a finger at the problems of someone other than ourselves, and pretend superiority. Refusing to adhere to the minimums agreed to in the Kyoto Agreement because China and India don't, comes from this same premise. Coal will only go away when we as a majority demand it, regardless of the pain it may cause in the shortrun to change our wasteful ways. At the rate we are going, Polar bears will be extinct before this happens.

[oldpotsmuggler]

The recipe for the future is that oil needs to go for transportation, natural gas needs to go for residential use, new sources of electricty need to be renewable, and coal needs to be used for hydrocarbon feedstocks. But this hasn't changed for thirty years or so, and we have made only miniscule progress towards creating this transition.

It is encouraging to see this discussion given the level of priority that it now has, but it still is not given the level of urgency that it needs to have. At least not by nearly enough people, including pretty much everyone on the right wing, and too large a portion of the Democratic leadership. However, the people are pushing the leaders much harder now than at any point in my life, so there is starting to be some hope.

[usna73]

Heaven only knows how much damage mercury and other heavy metals in the air and water has done to us. When will we ever learn?

[clevelandchick]

Love this post, my Drinking Liberally chapter just hosted a local doctor who was trained by Al Gore to give his global warming presentation. I'll forward this to all that attended.

What scared the crap out of me was when he said that if the permafrost in Siberia melts we are all toast. With China so close in proximity and building one new coal plant a week....I'm getting nervous that neither they or we will move away from coal fast enough to stop climate change past it's tipping point.