With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.
Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?
Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.
Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this
Why “going back to it” have we ever stopped?
I was going to say, coal remains around 1/3 of our electric generation worldwide (as of 2022): https://www.statista.com/statistics/269811/world-electricity-production-by-energy-source/
Coal can’t be reused, created, or otherwise obtained outside of mining. Until we remove our dependency on coal, mining will continue.
No. Among other things it remains the linchpin of energy security for industrial countries like China and Germany that lack adequate domestic oil or natural gas reserves to power their economies with those.
Germany had plenty of nuclear energy but decided they wanted to shut them all down. Now they have to use coal and LNG.
Yes. And even before the Russia mess they were going to replace nuclear with LNG, which is still pretty bad.