King Coal's Weakening Grip on Power.

• Author: Dunn, Seth
• Position: Statistical Data Included

The fuel that ushered in the Industrial Revolution still burns, but a new era beckons.

Revolution was literally in the air on February 28, 1998, when officials in Beijing and 32 other Chinese cities under pressure from the national environmental protection agency - began releasing pollution records that had been suppressed for 20 years. The weekly reports - intended to enable the public to supervise the government's anti-pollution efforts" - revealed that the air outside Beijing's Gate of Heavenly Peace had become hellish. Prolonged exposure to the air posed serious health risks and had increased the city's death rate by 4 percent, according to research from Harvard and Beijing Medical Universities.

The news rocked Beijing, and media reports generated angry outcries from citizens who discovered that the haze hovering over their city - and its related health problems - were almost entirely the result of coal, which supplies 80 percent of the city's energy use for factories, power plants, ovens, and stoves. A few months later, in response to public pressure, city authorities announced a crackdown on coal burning, with the aim of banning it by the end of the century. Beginning with the city's 42-square-mile central limits, the government plans to establish coal-free zones, with local authorities helping residents switch from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas.

Beijing's move to banish what was known as "King Coal" in the nineteenth century in the United States and Europe illustrates how perceptions of this fossilized substance have changed over time. A thousand years ago, China fired coal in blast furnaces to produce the armor and arrowheads that defended its dynasties against outside invaders. But it was in the West that coal was first burned in massive amounts, beginning in the eighteenth century. If the Industrial Revolution was "Prometheus unbound," coal was the fire stolen from the gods that made it possible. With its production paralleling the rise of national powers, this fossil fuel became synonymous with wealth and modernity in the nineteenth century. In his classic 1865 work, The Coal Question, economist William Jevons went as far as to predict the collapse of the British Empire as its coal mines approached depletion.

But Prometheus paid clearly for his deed; chained to a mountaintop, he had his liver torn out daily by vultures. Likewise, the reign of King Coal has not been without heavy costs: its use has left a legacy of human and environmental damage that we have only begun to assess. At the close of the twentieth century, coal's smog-choked cityscapes are no longer the symbol of industrial opportunities and wealth that they were 100 years ago. Instead, coal is increasingly recognized as a leading threat to human health, and one of the most environmentally disruptive human activities.

Indeed, the sun may be setting on the empire of coal. Its share of world energy, which peaked at 62 percent in 1910, is now 23 percent and dropping. Although coal's market price has fallen 64 percent in the past 20 years to a historical low of $32 per ton, global use is at its lowest in a decade, having fallen 2.1 percent in 1998. One reason for this decline is that the price of dealing with coal's health and environmental toll - the "hidden cost" - is rising. And now King Coal's remaining colonies find themselves confronted with a concern of the sort that bedeviled Jevons. This time, however, it is coal dependence - not depletion - that is the potential threat to progress.

Even so, the mirage of coal as a source of cheap energy continues to be a powerful lure, and many countries have gone to great lengths to rationalize their reliance - suppressing information, compartmentalizing problems, or socializing costs. Until now, the problems of coal have been treated with an "emergency room" approach: ecological impacts have been addressed pollutant by pollutant, mine by mine; the health hazards, one urban crisis at a time. This narrow approach has been an expensive one, both economically and environmentally, and has had perverse, unforeseen consequences: each time one of coal's impacts is "mitigated," a more pervasive and chronic problem is created, exacerbating and spreading the fuel's negative effects out over space and time. For example, towering smokestacks, built to alleviate local air pollution, created the problem of acid rain. And efforts to curtail acid rain, in turn, are adding to greenhouse-gas emissions.

Increasingly, human health, ecological, climatic, and socioeconomic concerns are pushing us away from this piecemeal regulation - toward an end to the "end-of-pipe" approach. But for the world to judge whether continued dependence on coal is viable, a more comprehensive examination is in order. After centuries of treating coal like a first-time offender, there is a growing consensus that it is time to assess this fossil fuel in terms of its cumulative offenses and to seriously weigh the benefits of replacing it with cleaner, and ultimately cheaper, alternatives.

Exhibit A: Health Hazard

The solid blackish substance called coal is vegetation that has, over millions of years, accumulated in wetlands and been partially decomposed, suffocated, moisturized, compressed, and baked by the Earth's inner heat underground. During this process, unfathomable quantities of organic matter have been slowly broken down and stored. The act of extracting coal from the Earth's crust and burning it is an experiment without geological precedent, and it is altering the environment in profound, yet poorly understood, ways.

Coal has long been linked to air pollution and iii effects on health. In medieval London, an official proclamation banned coal burning as early as 1306 A.D. in an unsuccessful effort to curb the smog and sulfurous smell hanging over the city. Even today particulate matter (dust, soot, and other solid airborne pollutants) and sulfur are two of the most unhealthy by-products of coal combustion.

Particulates penetrate deep into lungs. Prolonged inhalation causes a range of respiratory and cardiovascular problems, such as emphysema, asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, and heart disease. It is also linked to higher infant mortality rates. The smallest particles can stay in an individual's lungs for a lifetime, potentially increasing the risk of cancer. Sulfur dioxide ([SO.sub.2]) exposure is associated with...