Coal Book Review! (Coal: A Human History)

When talking about sources of energy, it feels like coal doesn't get the attention it deserves.  It's dirty, underground, and rife with danger and labor disputes in remote areas of Appalachia.  Coal can feel old fashioned the same way a wood burning stove feels quaint.  When was the last time you used coal?  In the past year you may have pumped a car with gasoline, used a natural gas stove, and maybe seen neighbors installing solar panels or even started a camp fire.  But coal?  There's a slight chance that you've grilled with charcoal, but that's about it.  It feels removed from American life as clean air and climate change concerns have swelled.  But coal hasn't just been left underground.  Upon reading Barbara Freese's "Coal: A Human History," it made me aware of the fact that coal could be playing a bigger role in our lives than ever before.

Background: across the pond
Freese's book, though brief, does a great job painting visuals of different eras in the life of coal.  It highlights its impact on economic development, the workplace, and city life.  It also zooms to the present to discuss, at the time it was published, major policy battles over its role in our future.  

As far as could be gleaned, coal wasn't a choice.  It wasn't an accident either, but it wasn't ideal for most.  As the UK used wood faster than it could be replenished, energy sources were threatened, which could've meant bitter winters and cold meals.  Coal mines increasingly came in to replace wood, but not without a fight.  Convincing people to fill their homes with coal smoke, convincing workers to descend into hellish mines, and convincing city leaders to accept blankets of smog were not easy tasks.  But as coal grew to be the new standard, British life was transformed.  Heating costs plummeted, innovations were generated to produce steam power for factories and trains, and a network of ships to transport coal around the country boosted Britain's naval prowess.  In a sense, coal, with its large supply and high energy output, transformed Britain into an industrial, commercial, and imperial powerhouse.

But again, not without cost.  The health of children raised in coal towns alone speaks to the tragedy of this dirty fuel source.  In the words of Freese: 

"Babies raised in the new industrial darkness of the 1800s were vulnerable to rickets for many reasons [...] and came to be known elsewhere simple as 'the English disease'.  In some neighborhoods, doctors reported that every child they saw showed signs of rickets.  As recently as 1918, a government report found that not less than half the general population in Britain's industrial areas suffered from rickets, and called the disease 'probably the most potent factor interfering with the efficiency of the race'."

Consider also the harrowing accounts of the Scottish operating in early coal mines:

"[...] the seventeenth-century English coal miner was lucky: At least he wasn't a coal miner in Scotland.  There, whole families were bonded for life to a coal mine, reduced to a form of industrial serfdom [...].  It is hard to imagine a workplace more dismal and dangerous than a seventeenth-century coal mine.  Dark, damp, cramped, and chilly, the mines had ceilings that could collapse on your head, air that could smother you, poison, or explode in your face, and water that could rush in a drown you or trap you forever [...].  It was probably the most dangerous profession of a dangerous time [...]."

And into our backyard
Coal wasn't initially popular in the now United States either.  Blessed with seemingly limitless forests, Americans used wood for just about everything.  Many towns touching the Appalachian edge of the new, independent country, however, were surrounded by coal.  These stocks were used for highly energy intensive industries, like glass and iron making, in places like Pittsburgh.  And over time, these local sites grew as canal and rail transport networks expanded.

Coal use expanded dramatically because of industrialization.  Cleaner anthracite coal found in Pennsylvania could be used for producing iron and steel.  Urban factories expanded and before long coal became the primary source of energy, particularly with creating and running trains.  Trains then offered greater access and delivery of coal.  Before long America had the richest men on the planet on top of great rail, steel, and coal companies.  The power of many of them developed into the first cartels or 'pools', which ended up being the targets of anti-monopoly popular reactions and labor unions.  Everything from the mid 1800s to early 1900s simply became big.  And coal was the fuel behind it all.

It wasn't until post-World War II that coal's eminence began to truly decline.  As transit evolved from rail to car and plane, petroleum products came to the center of American life.  Coal continued to fuel power plants, but their location became increasingly under pressure due to the burgeoning environmental movement in the mid 1900s.  Further as climate change concerns have expanded, coal has become a target, given that it generates about 50% more carbon dioxide than gasoline.  These pressures are much less significant in places like China and India, however, whose extraction and consumption have grown exponentially (about 700% since 1980 in both countries).  

Who is to say what the future of coal will be.  But the themes in its history are useful to help understand other sources of energy as well.  Usage out of necessity, changes to transport, military strengthening, industrial output, pollution and health concerns, consolidation of power and popular pushback, and finally partial replacement by new demands better met by other fuels.  Coal threads its way from the industrial revolution to our modern energy grids.  It still exists and is still growing in usage.  Will it some day decline to percentages of usage that we see with wood?  Maybe it won't be a limited, domestic fuel source, but one could see it being used for niche industrial or municipal purposes.  The rest of its place in our global society is a mystery.  If countries can leave the trees standing, can others leave the coal in the ground?