Clean coal, forest biofuel and other fairy tales.

• Author: Barry, Glen
• Position: 80% Less Energy - Viewpoint essay

Two of the biggest, most dangerous lies being promoted in response to global warming are that clean coal exists and the world's forests are adequate to provide biofuel. Dirty coal and industrial forest harvest for energy only accelerate the root causes of looming Doomsday for the Earth--that is destruction of the biosphere's atmospheric and terrestrial ecosystems.

Coal burning and forest loss have been the leading culprits in climate change to date, and should their continued use at any scale be pursued as the solution to climate change and energy security, it will prove the death-knell for the planet. We need less fossil fuel use and more forest regeneration, not the reverse.

The myth of "Clean Coal" is pernicious nonsense, as promised carbon sequestration technologies remain unproven, are not likely to be pursued at any scale anytime soon and are primarily used to put off limits on burning coal. Coal is cheap, plentiful and dirty.

Carbon emissions from burning coal have been the leading cause of global warming. The world's coal reserves hold some 3500 gigatonnes of carbon, compared to the atmosphere currently holding around 800 gigatonnes (600 gigatonnes before the industrial revolution). If this coal is burnt and carbon vented into the atmosphere the planet will be several times past the concentration of carbon dioxide considered able to be adapted to safely.

China is opening another coal plant every 7 to 10 days. The US coal industry is rushing to build some 150 new plants before mandatory carbon caps, carbon taxes or carbon sequestration are put in place. Each of these new dirty coal plants uses the oldest of technologies, locking the world's two greatest polluters into dirty coal for at least 50 more years. I know of no plans to make carbon sequestration mandatory any time soon for new coal plants. It will be at least 10 years before we know if geosequestration even works. Carbon capture and storage is expensive, increasing the costs of power generation by 40-80%. Despite all the promises of coal gasification and carbon sequestration, it may never be possible to produce energy from coal without atmospheric carbon emissions.

Could it be that carbon sequestration like the hydrogen automobile is a red herring to allow the fossil fuel industries to squeeze every last drop of profit from the planet before being forced to stop? In the world of 9 billion consumers to come, with the condition of the atmosphere in such tatters, the majority of...