Cheap Coal - The 21st Century Monster

Coal. It's the dirtiest form of fossil fuel going. More pollution, more carbon emissions. By far.

Coal was there at the birth of the Industrial Revolution and it's still with us well over 200 years later.

Think about it: When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818, coal had already been indispensable for decades. Yet here we are in a 21st century world that Shelley would barely recognise, and we're still dependent on it.  In fact our use of coal is actually increasing.

Now it seems the problem's getting even worse because the U.S.'s move to shale gas has resulted in the price of coal plummeting. Some countries have taken that as their cue to increase their use of coal regardless of their own carbon targets. That's what's happening in Britain and even the E.U. (See here).

To be fair, it's power companies that are making that decision for them based on the profit motive, but it amounts to the same thing when they're allowed to do what they like.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was about a monster brought to life with a jolt of electric. Today we are living in the shadow of a climate changing monster given life by our hunger for electricity: Cheap coal.

Neither are a pretty sight. Anyone got a pitch fork?