Environmentally Friendly Energy Resources? No Thanks, Coal is Preferred

Current discourse about environmental sustainability and global warming is at an all time high. With all those hybrid cars, like the Toyota Prius, lurking on every street corner and movies, which wasn’t really a movie at all but a rather elongated PowerPoint presentation, like Al Gore’s and Inconvenient Truth hitting the big screen, more and more people are becoming aware of the potential environmental problems we face in the near future. Even the seventh goal of the United Nations’ MDGs is focused on environmental sustainability while promoting economic growth. However, according to a recent Associated Press article entitled, “World's coal dependency hits environment,” the international effort to integrate alternative energy resources is far from becoming a reality. In fact, dependency on coal is expected to drastically increase by 60 percent by 2030 to 6.9 billion tons a year. How then, can the UN increase environmental sustainability when the world continues to destroy the environment by consuming fossil fuels?

Coal is simply cheap and abundant. It is the fuel of choice in much of the world with a majority of it going towards electrical power plants. Accordingly, the fossil fuel is responsible for the economic booms in China and India and it has seemingly lifted millions of people out of poverty. Of course it is great to see economic development in parts of the world where poverty has been a longstanding issue, but because of the pollutants emitted by the burning of coal, the environment has suffered drastically. Most of the buzz on global warming today is an externality of carbon emissions. An atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, Dan Jaffe, states, “Hands down, coal is by far the dirtiest pollutant.” The growth of coal-burning is also directly related to environmental and health issues including acid rain and asthma. An estimated 2 million people are killed prematurely as a result of air pollution, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

It would be politically incorrect to point fingers at individual nations with respects to who is responsible for global warming because every nation has made their contributions. Yet, recent trends have shown that some countries are contributing more to the carbon mission than others. In fact, China and India have been on the forefront of polluting the environment. It takes five to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. An AP Environmental Writer, Michael Casey, comments in an article that it takes 5 to 10 days for the pollution from China's coal-fired plants to make its way to the United States, like a slow-moving storm. China’s pollutants have been found in the form of mercury in the bass and trout caught in Oregon's Willamette River and contributes to acid rain in Japan and South Korea.

Despite all the environmental concerns, China shows little desire to convert to alternative energy. A prime example would be population of the town of Taiyuan and the surrounding Shanxi Province. This area is China's top coal-producing region and one of its most polluted. Nevertheless, coal has turned poor farmers in this city of 3 million people into Mercedes-driving millionaires. Therefore, it all comes down to the power of money. I guess it’s time to think about what’s more important; a sustainable planet for future generations or wealth and pleasure today?

Global Warming... Really?

In a recently published article by Inter Press Services’ (IPS), a news agency associated with the United Nations, reporter Stephen Leahy wrote on the United States and President Bush’s current position on the imperative issue of climate change. According to Leahy, “After years of denial, the U.S. White House-sponsored summit on climate change ended Friday, [September 28, 2007], with President George W. Bush admitting that global warming was real and humans were responsible and asking for heads of state to join him at yet another summit next year (when his presidency ends).” It seems that the U.S. has finally come to terms with the fact that it just might be humans and their practices of burning fossil fuels that have been the undisputable causes of global warming. As stated by Chris Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute, a U.S.-based environmental group, “President Bush has so little credibility on climate change,” which is of no surprise to me seeing as how throughout his presidency, he continued to push voluntary cuts to greenhouse gas emissions despite the fact that the rest of the world had already concluded that such an approach simply was not effective. Nevertheless, President Bush’s strategies towards dealing with climate change have been described as an attempt to derail the U.N. process on climate change. Apparently, the White House-sponsored summit was seen to be some sort of tactic to divert U.S. public and media attention away from the U.N. climate summit held earlier in the week, where more than 80 heads of state endorsed the concept of an international post-Kyoto agreement to cap emissions.

The U.S. has not been the ideal advocate against greenhouse gas emissions. Quite simply, it seems President Bush is intending to leave this issue up to the upcoming President. However, Bush is not left to entirely blame for the current U.S. position amidst international concern with climate change. The nation’s demise essentially began when it signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 because under the initial conditions, it was non-binding on the U.S. Consequently, no plans were made to ratify the Protocol because the U.S. thought it would be a threat to their economy if developing nations were not bound to measurable targets and timetables. Thus, the U.S. has failed to make a constructive effort towards the overall objective of the Kyoto Protocol, which is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, considering their status as the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels in 2005.

Coincidentally, the developing nations in which the U.S. used as an excuse to not comply with the Kyoto Protocol during the first round of negotiations, which include China and India, have instated automobile fuel efficiency requirements, a commitment to 15 percent renewable energy by 2020, and other concrete emissions reduction initiatives that far surpass U.S. efforts. Furthermore, during the second round of commitments period scheduled to take place in Bali, Indonesia in December of this year, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) plans to make further progress on the issue.

Critiques like Hans Verolme, director of the WWF’s Global Climate Change Programme, believe that, “Everyone is getting ready to move as soon as there's a change in the White House,” and I must say that I truly believe him. There is still much more progress that needs to seen in order to regulate to viciously changing climate. It’s hard to believe that of all living organisms on the planet, humans are the ones destroying the sole entity that allows them to thrive. I can’t say that I’m not for saving the soon-to-be extinct polar bears, but if current trends don’t change within the next few decades, drastic changes will be quite apparent throughout the world. I couldn’t put any better way myself, but as the former Vice President Al Gore puts it in his book An Inconvenient Truth, “Perhaps, but inconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not responded to their significance doesn’t diminish; it grows.”