ABSTRACT
Most people think that we must give up using coal to save the planet from its awful pollution. Some dedicated ecologists even see nuclear fuel as a more acceptable option. George Monbiot argues that:
The tiny risk imposed by nuclear power has both obscured and invoked the far greater risk imposed by coal. Scare stories about nuclear power are a gift to the coal industry. When these stories are taken seriously by politicians – as they have been in Japan – causing a switch from nuclear to coal, they kill people. (Monbiot 2017: 170)
Some groups try to hold on to the idea that coal has a real future. They advertise the virtues of ‘clean coal’, which may be obtained through elaborate carbon capture and storage schemes and expensive scrubbing and washing technologies, but most analysts of the industry see this as prohibitively expensive.