In my ongoing survey of who is writing what about climate change, I find myself stopped by what might be called “clickbait” titles, including a doozy from Will Lockett, who publishes his work in Predict, a Medium-based magazine of sorts that runs the tagline “where the future is written” also publishes his work standalone. When I came across a recent piece of his titled “This One Thing Can Save The Planet,” published July 11, I had to click, so, checkmate.

The subtitle was equally clickable: “We can avoid climate armageddon by changing just one thing.”

To save you the trouble (although the article is worth taking your time), the one thing is coal. You might feel a bit disappointed with that answer, because we know that answer already. What I didn’t know is that if this is the only thing we do, hell on Earth can be mitigated.

The specific form of hell is the magical 3 degree Celsius rise in temperature for which we seem very likely on track, thanks to coal (among a few other things, I’m pretty sure), or as Lockett puts it:

Out of all the fossil fuels, coal is the most egregious. It has by far the largest carbon footprint per kWh of energy, at an eye-watering 950g! For some comparison, solar and wind hover around 5g — 10g per kWh, and natural gas sits at about 350g per kWh. Due to the heavy metal and radioactive impurities inherent in coal, they actually emit ten times more radiation into the environment per kWh than a nuclear power plant and can poison the soils around them for centuries to come. To make matters even worse, they pump the air full of particulates, which cause respiratory problems and even cancers in humans.

Lockett add another paragraph or two about how bad coal is, and the says the following:

Despite this, we still use a vast amount of coal power. Coal accounts for 19.5% of the US’s energy mix, 15.8% of the EU’s, 55% of India’s and 55% of China’s! This means that while the energy industry accounts for 42.5% of humanity’s total carbon emissions, 73% of the energy industry’s emissions come from coal!

The big problem isn’t what we’ve been doing with coal (not that this hasn’t been a significant cause of climate change already), but that coal use is likely to continue and even expand, at least for the foreseeable future. The reason is the growing demand for power that outstrips renewables and other greener energy production even as these expand. A bigger problem is that coal use seems likely to expand to meet energy needs in China and India, both major greenhouse gas-contributing nations.

Coal use expands even as renewable energy expands, because energy demands expand.

Lockett cites a study, “Phasing out coal for 2 °C target requires worldwide replication of most ambitious national plans despite security and fairness concerns,” which is, if you can’t tell from the title, a research paper. This paper is published in IOPScience, and if you want to better understand the challenges continuing use of coal presents and possible mitigation or reduction of said use, you’ll want to read the paper.

Lockett deserves thanks for bringing this research to our attention and I am personally grateful because I’ve bookmarked the paper for future reference as I write Over Brooklyn Hills, which is Book Three of The Steep Climes Quartet, where the challenge of ongoing increases in energy demand and China’s continuing use of coal is part of the story.

Without Lockett’s clickbaitable title, I might have missed this paper, so there’s that.