Jan 2, 2011

China has seen the future, and it is coal

China needs to burn more coal to fire its plants making wind turbines to produce green energyhttp://www.mostpowerfulidea.com/images/Rose_power_9781-330-exp.jpg
...approved construction of a coal export terminal from which millions of tons of U.S. coal could be shipped to Asia annually.

Both Oregon and Washington are curtailing the coal-fired generation of electricity, but the future looks to greens as black as coal. The future looks a lot like the past.

Historian William Rosen (who wrote "The Most Powerful Idea in the World," about the invention of the steam engine) says
HTML clipboard coal was Europe's answer to the 12th-century "wood crisis," when Christians leveled much forestation to destroy sanctuaries for pagan worship and to open up farmland. Population increase meant more wooden carts, houses and ships, so wood became an expensive way to heat dwellings or cook. By 1230, England had felled so many trees it was importing most of its timber and was turning to coal…Half of the 6 billion tons of coal burned globally each year is burned in China. A spokesman for the Sierra Club, which in recent years has helped to block construction of 139 proposed coal-fired plants in America, says, "This is undermining everything we've accomplished." America, say environmentalists, is exporting global warming.
Read full at WashingtonPost

Haase - "Learn from history or become it"