Despite being "concerned" about global warming and other environmental problems, many Americans and the rest of the world's citizens seem to be feeling good about the consumer economy because they believe that coal will sustain it as oil and gas reserves begin to fall in production to the point where they no longer meet demand.

It's one of those problems that people say "Dude, chill! We have technology! We'll find a way to burn coal without producing carbon dioxide!"

What many people don't seem to understand is that it is not possible to burn CARBON (the major component of coal) without producing CARBON dioxide. It's not like carbon monoxide, where it is just a matter of running the furnaces hotter and with more air (so that it gets converted to carbon dioxide), it is an UNAVOIDABLE by-product. We can try to capture the billions of tons of CO₂ from coal combustion and stash it someplace, but we are not going to be able to eliminate it.

Technology also can't eliminate that fact that coal has to be mined, and that mining is by nature a destructive and dangerous process.

There's also concern now that the actual reserves of coal in the ground are not as great as we would like to believe.

The demand for coal in Asia is beginning to outstrip the supplies. Bad weather and other problems have lead to shortages and power stations in electricity-hungry China, Japan and South Korea are running low on coal. The Australian port of Newcastle, which is the world's largest coal export terminal, has collier ships waiting for weeks in multi-kilometer long lines.

Australia just had the hottest January on record, no doubt creating an excess demand for electricity from its 85% coal power grid.

The South African electricity crisis has lead to a halt of South African coal exports until the problem is resolved. South Africa serves as a backup to Australia for many Asian countries.

European electricity prices are under upward pressure for fear of the inability to acquire coal.

The highly-lauded FutureGen partnership between several American electric companies and the United States Department of Energy to build a coal-fueled electricity plant that runs without any emissions to the atmosphere may not even happen, now that the DOE has dropped much of the support for the $1.8 billion facility.

While the technology probably is not going to be able to sustain the fossil-fueled oblivion, it should at least be tested to see if it will actually be feasible at all and to compare its economics and environmental impacts with renewables. Whether or not government money should be used to do that, is up for argument. I believe that government financial support of any kind should be going towards sensible renewables and sensible renewables only (read that as: not corn ethanol! ). The new plan by DOE is to fund only the carbon sequestration portion of the plant, as the gasifier and power generation sections are proven technology which can be paid for by private enterprise.

In addition to electricity, the FutureGen plant was to produce hydrogen (presumably via the water-gas process ). This hydrogen would be used to fuel vehicles, despite the fact that hydrogen cars are highly impractical compared with straight electric models. Battery EVs could be on the road today provided they are manufactured, but fuel cell EVs require a whole new fueling infrastructure that only Big Oil/Coal would be able to provide, along with their reign of greed and environmental destruction.

I remember a few years back when people were calling FutureGen "NeverGen". I guess that was a pretty good prediction.

We have been so successful industrially over the past 150 years because we have constantly been "upgrading" our energy sources. The transition from coal to oil brought with it much prosperity, with automobiles and cleaner heating systems for homes and power plants. Oil was easier for people to use and it was easier to transport. Making petrochemicals was also easier to do with oil than coal. Then, we discovered how to use natural gas, which could be burnt without any smoke or noxious fumes for cooking, heating, and other purposes. Natural gas quickly became the choice for industries, especially the fertilizer industry which uses the methane in natural gas to produce ammonium nitrate fertilizer. Gas and oil are easier to handle and easier to burn.

Coal, on the other hand, can not be accepted as a civilized fuel unless it is first "upgraded" into electricity, liquid fuels, or a synthetic gas, which can be a very inefficient and dirty process.

Just like oil, once we mine out all of the "easy" coal, we are left with low-grade things like lignite, or mines that are thousands of miles away from any population center. There's all kinds of coal under the seabed or under our cities. There's all kinds of coal in developing countries just waiting for a Western mining company to come and rip up the land! Unlike oil, it is not the fairly benign act of drilling a hole in the ground, it is a matter of ripping up the landscape.

When we begin generating more electricity from coal, and using it for such purposes as the production of liquid fuels, its consumption increases and the amount of time it buys us decreases. If we make gasoline from coal, it will send the message that "It's alright to drive Hummers now!" since the fuel is coming from a domestic source. Today I see Ford Explorers with "Support the Troops" magnets stuck to the back. You'd better support the troops, they are the people fueling your gas guzzler! If we weren't all petrol heads, a military presence wouldn't even be needed.

Coal is often called the "bridge fuel" from oil to cleaner energy sources. Coal is the bridge fuel to nowhere, it is a step backwards. It gives us no incentive to cross the bridge, we just stay on it while the consumer economy rages until it collapses.

• The Great Coal Hole
• The Great Coal Rush (and why it will fail)