nonlinear

Jeff Goodell mines the rich history of coal in the United States to unearth the good it has brought and the destruction it has wrought in Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future

Much like the authors of The End of Oil and Field Notes from a Catastrophe, Goodell paints an alarming picture of our near-future, pointing out that thanks to our reliance on coal fired electric plants, planet Earth will irrevocably enter a warming period in 2017.

In short, our addiction to coal is as perverse and damaging as any addition to oil.

This addiction began in earnest with the brilliant Samuel Insull, Jr., a protégé of Edison. Insull “set in motion a self-perpetuating cycle of rising [coal / electric] use and declining rates that eventually enveloped an urban society in a ubiquitous world of energy.” Heady stuff for one man.

Just as Earl Butz put America on the path to obesity in 1971, Insull hatched our crack-like need for electricity in the 1890s, creating big electric plants as far away from cities as possible, allowing government regulation to create an electric monopoly in a region and stimulating demand for consumer products that required electricity.

The greatest innovation of Insull — flat rate pricing for electricity. Sadly, our dependency on coal is largely invisible. Sure, I have asthma, but it’s hard to pinpoint what triggered it. Yes, coal miners are among the most exploited workers in America, but frankly, I don’t care about what happens to unlucky schmucks in West Virginia when I turn on my TV or recharge my cell phone. And most importantly, the cost to use my central air conditioning cost the same no matter the time of day. Although it costs more to create electricity when demand is high, us end users are “totally disconnected from the price of power.” Instead of a market for electricity, a market that might make our use of coal more rational and better for the world, we are stuck with a system hatched in the 1800s.

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