Old King Coal Remains Omnipotent and Omnipresent
The dirtiest fossil fuel still powers the world. Talk of its demise is greatly exaggerated.
Every six hours, the world consumes enough of the dirtiest fossil fuel to build a coal replica of this, the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Photograph: Archive Photos/Getty Images
Every second, the world burns 275 metric tons of coal – enough to fill 10 large dump trucks. That makes nearly 17,000 tons per minute, or one million tons an hour. Quickly, the mass becomes so large that it’s difficult to comprehend its enormity, but I’ll take a stab at putting it into context: Every six hours, the world consumes enough to build a coal replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
Coal and the industrial revolution it fueled created the world we live in — and nearly two centuries after George Stephenson used his “Locomotion No. 1” coal-fired steam engine to haul a passenger car along rails for the first time, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels remains unquestionably central to the global economy.