In these uncertain times, it’s good when a little sunshine comes into our lives. Actually, a lot of sunshine! I am an American citizen, born and raised in England, and I still pay attention to news from across the pond. This year saw the sunniest and the driest May in Great Britain since records began in 1862. It was also the first month in over a hundred years when no coal was burned in British power stations.
These two news items are not unrelated; electricity demand is down because of the warm weather (air-conditioning is not common in England) and most people stayed safe at home. Everywhere the air is cleaner thanks to fewer flights and less driving. The skies are bluer, too.
When I was a kid, our house was heated by a single coal fire; we had weekly deliveries by the “coalman.” Burning coal was the main source of energy for electricity and heating buildings. The smoke caused smogs – toxic fogs sometimes so thick that you couldn’t see across the road.
In the USA some power plants were being fed daily by trains 2 km long with more than 100 cars, each with 100 tons of coal. When coal is burnt, carbon atoms do not disappear! They are practically indestructible. Imagine pumping 10,000 tons of carbon atoms in the form of gases, carbon monoxide and dioxide, into the atmosphere every day, from just one power station.
That’s good for plants, which take the carbon to grow and return the oxygen. But it’s bad for the climate; that change in the atmosphere is warming the Earth and making a sunny May in England. That was nice, but the big picture – not local weather but global climate – is changing in ways that are decidedly not nice. Unless you like hurricanes and droughts and floods and other such events that are more dramatic now.
Reducing emissions by carbon dioxide removal (sequestration) can help slow the inevitable, but the goal is to make burning coal a thing of the past; it is a precious source of carbon for hundreds of products including plastics and fertilizer.
Talking about the past, that coal took more than 50 million years to make. When it’s gone, all burnt up, it won’t come back.
But always look on the bright side of life: The Sun will keep shining and the wind will keep blowing. Probably more than ever!
