1,200 Coal-Fired Plants Headed Our Way Within 10 Years

by David Merrill, Global Warming Solutions.Org

Worldwide, 1,200 coal-fired power plants are slated to come online over the next decade or so, mostly in China, India, and the United States. If this happens, any hope of arresting further destabilization of the atmosphere will be dashed.

How could the siting of these plants be forestalled? The only conceivable way would be for the relative economics of bringing on new generation from renewable sources wind, sun, biomass, and geothermal to be so clearly superior that any power planner that proposed a new coal plant would be laughed out of the room.

Some people think that this might be impossible. No one has ever been able to demonstrate to me that it is. But heres a real definition of impossible: Imagining that humanity will be able to manage the increasingly devastating climate impacts that will surely follow if these plants are built.

Apart from extricating humanity from its climate peril, which is certainly our moral obligation, consider three other enormous benefits we would reap if we pursued this difficult but worthy path (of taking concrete steps to rein in climate change, see www.globalwarmingsolution.org for ideas):

• We would save money. If we continue on the path that we are on it is all but certain wewill ravage the global economy through increasingly deadly body blows fromhurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. There is no question that destroying the economy through climate destabilization is going to be much more expensive than protecting it by switching as rapidly as possible to a renewables-powered system.
• We would create an enormous number of new jobs around the world in renewable energyand energy efficiency, a process that is already underway.
• We could tap peoples yearning for a better world by coming together in an uplifting and unifying global endeavor pursued in the name of our children and this gem of a planet we inhabit.