The Rise, Reign, and Fall of American Coal

MSN.com ^ | 10/21/2025 | Erik Loomis

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Never mind that modern coal plants scrub the pollutants from the effluent, or that China and India are building a coal plant a week without the inconvenience of scrubbers, or that mining for battery components is more environmentally destructive than coal ever was.

[TexasFreeper2009]

I have seen studies recently that removing the smoke from the air from burning coal is what caused temperatures to rise.

[Waverunner]

Perhaps we should burn dung, after all MSN produces it in such great quantities.
Free energy for all, from a green source.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Perhaps we should burn dung, after all MSN produces it in such great quantities. Free energy for all, from a green source.

[Slingwing]

Look at it from a realistic point that is a fact. CO2 feeds plants and in turn plants exhale O2 which fuels humans and animals. Strange how that works especially when humans are about 20% carbon to begin with.

[DIRTYSECRET]

When a volcano blows doesn’t that burn more coal than engines?

[marktwain]

I argue, while coal was important, petroleum has been far, far more important than coal.

[Z28.310]

...Grande Staircase Escalante

[Dr. Sivana]

Before we burned coal, we burned wood. Is that better?

What drives Trump’s politics is nostalgia for the age of coal

It is NOT "nostalgia". Red China is building more coal plants than it ever had. Are the Red Chinese also "nostalgic" for the era of American coal?

Coal is cheap joules, BTUs, Calories . . . ENERGY.

The number of hard working miners who have died from it is MUCH less in men or man-years than the number of unemployed who are dying from meth and fentanyl because of their situation. We have a LOT of it. Coal works.

[1Old Pro]

...Grande Staircase Escalante

Love Scenic Byway 12

[SuperLuminal]

My goodness!
This has to be the worst stinking garbage bag of pure propaganda the world has ever had to endure...

[Paladin2]

So, build more Nukes.

[Paladin2]

China apparently still has coal seam wild fires that produce as much CO2 as all of the USA’s light duty vehicle fleet.

[dagunk]

Can’t beat distilled petroleum products for portable energy storage.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

**Grande Staircase Escalante**

There are huge coal fields in that area Kaiparowits Plateau, Utah, and there was plans 55 years ago to build mine-mouth plants in the area. Then it was shut down. Bill Clinton declared the area THE BEAR’S EARS NATIONAL MONUMENT and killed all those plans.
Obama tried to shut our plant down but it was so economic that our company built UN-NEEDED SCRUBBERS due to the low sulfur coal, to remove that last 2% of sulfur. It is still running but now has a 100 ft high mountain of scrubber waste where there was none for 40 years.
Sadly Page AZ and Farmington NM have destroyed their power plants.

[GingisK]

Sure, as long as you ignore the production of steel.

[Veto!]

I come from a very poor coal mining family, My dad was born in Rich Hill. Missouri., Just a little crossroads with, apparently, coal to mine. That’s what my grandfather did.

Dad wasn’t interested and left at 15, went to Kansas City and got a job at a Little restaurant called B/G for Buck and Gage, two men who founded it. Several years later, my dad became President of BG foods and opened restaurants from NYC to San Francisco and LA. I grew up in a Chicago suburb ranked as 7th wealthiest in the US.

My dad always said you didn’t have to work hard if you worked smart.

[Dr. Sivana]

My dad always said you didn’t have to work hard if you worked smart.

Absolutely, and I am glad that your father lived in a society where his talent, hard work, and initiative were rewarded.

Not everyone has the traits to "work smart" in a way that gets him ahead. I have brains, and had sufficient education, and have done at times some really good work. It never translated into a lot of money (though more than coal mining). But if you want to use your physical skills to do the tough work of mining, in order to stay near family, or whatever, it is honorable. A young man who may not be interested in college may go up the the oil patches in Alaska as a rough neck, and work hard for a couple of years and make good money. The world needs energy, and we should pay people who work hard to help us get it.

[BiteYourSelf]

Mine those mountains for rare earths.🤔

[The Great RJ]

Consider the corn ethanol boondoggle. Those “green” ethanol plants are belching CO2 from the fermentation of corn that another green scam is being proposed to collect this CO2 and send it by pipeline across several states to be injected deep into the ground in North Dakota.