We have seen it here time and again, burning coal is a huge health issue. This is even more worrying as it is the most polluting fossil fuel and the environmental enemy number One.
Now here comes a study from the Health and Environment Alliance – or HEAL – on how this energy source is having a tremendously staggering toll on Europeans. According to the Daily Climate :
” Burning coal to produce electricity costs Europeans €42.8 billion, or $55 billion, in health care costs annually, a new analysis finds. In Poland alone, the tab tops €8 billion. “
And if you believe it is an isolated fact due to the way how Europeans burn coal, read on. Burning coal in the United States of America costs half a trillion a year and kills 13,200 people in the US last year.
It’s not an exageration if I wrote previously that coal is the enemy of the human race as ” Electricity from coal imposes more damages on the U.S. economy than the electricity is worth. That’s right: Coal-fired power is a net value-subtracting industry.”
Now comes another study, this time focusing on India. To the Guardian, ” Indian coal power plants kill 120,000 people a year “. Worse, it may be responsible for 20 MILLION cases of asthma per year.
Don’t these figures make you think why, oh why are we keeping on burning this stuff ?
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As RTCC reports, ” Coal fired power plants in Europe should be banned by 2040 as their emissions cause high levels of sickness “
Reading further their article, one learns that burning coal damages the brain – no worries, nobody is using that – the heart – same, who needs a heart anyway ? – lungs – this is not really surprising – but also blood and the circulatory system. In other words :
Coal is a poison, plain and simple…
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We have seen previously that the United States of America could be coal-free by 2030 with a significant cut by 2020. This is feasible in a country were not that recently was using the black stuff to make half of its electricity.
Given how the European Union’s electricity comes from only 26 percent coal (source : slide 19), I believe the EU could – should – phase it out before the USA.
Luckily for us, the prices of solar and other renewables are dropping as solar reaches grid parity around the world
It’s high time to use renewables and efficiency to phase out coal. It will be good for human health but also for our cvilization’s health.
when living in Utah state, i often witnessed inversions which kept the
thick yellow curtain of sour sulfur suspended above our village in the
East desert..it was like a sword of Damocles..threatening our lungs
and worrying us.
officials from the electrical plant steadfastly refused to admit any health
concerns associated with the visible pollution..the obvious may have been that coal was so close and easy to obtain at low cost there.
I breathe much better since moving..the local energy source in the Midwest is wind — cheaper and safer; farmers still use the land below towers and graze cattle–while cashing the extra income from rent on the land-use permits.
Hello and thank you very much for sharing your story with everybody Nadine.
Wind is indeed a great choice as everybody wins with it. The farmer, the community at large, the Earth ( or more prosaically, our civilization )
Let’s make wind, and solar, and all the other renewables the way we power our cities, states and countries ! 🙂