![](/static/66c60d9f/assets/icons/icon-96x96.png)
![](https://fry.gs/pictrs/image/c6832070-8625-4688-b9e5-5d519541e092.png)
The problem is that we’re not getting rid of the other stuff
We are, though. Coal use in the United States has cut in half in the last 15 years, and it’s still on a steep downward slope. Even as natural gas (which emits roughly half the CO2 per unit energy as coal) increased over the same time period, our total emissions from energy consumption has dropped from about 6 billion tons to 4.8 billion tons.
The progress we’re making might be slower than many of us would like, but we’re also at a tipping point where we’re making many fossil fuels simply uneconomical. And that’s the key: to make polluting costly enough that big businesses won’t want to.
Coal companies are literally going bankrupt as coal plants get decommissioned. When it comes to actual political power, the fossil fuel industry you want to watch out for is oil and gas, not coal.
Mine all the coal you want. If you don’t have anyone willing to buy from you, at a price that covers the cost of extraction, you will fail.
So even though the coal companies’ bankruptcies are getting them out of their cleanup and decommissioning obligations, the root cause of that is that coal just isn’t competitive as an energy source.