Coal is the most abundant fossil fuel on earth. Most coal originated about 300-350 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period of the Paleozoic Era. Coal usually formed from terrestrial swamp vegetation, whereas the other fossil fuels, gas and oil, mostly formed from marine organisms that sank after death and accumulated on ocean bottoms.

Coal is the dirtiest, the most polluting, and the unhealthiest of the fossil fuels. It's also the one that is the principal source of Greenhouse gasses which are causing Global Warming. Coal creates problems when it is mined, when it is transported to factories and power plants, when its smokestacks belch out toxic gasses, aerosols, and metallic vapors when it is burned, and when its combustion waste-products (ashes) are transported to and dumped in out-of-the-way places. In addition, microscopic particulates from soot and coal dust get caught in lung alveoli where they contribute to lung cancer, emphysema, and other respiratory diseases. Also, coal burning is a major cause of acid rain, which is harmful to forest, meadow, and agricultural vegetation and to fish in ponds, lakes, and seas. Even the huge oceans that cover 70 percent of our planet are becoming dangerously acidic because of acid rain created when we burn coal.

Coal and its natural impurities such as sulfur and mercury are harmless in unburned underground coal layers, but the benign substances morph into deadly killers during combustion. Sulfur becomes poisonous sulfur dioxide or environmentally-destructive sulfuric acid which turns into acid rain. Mercury, a terribly debilitating neurotoxin, gets into the atmosphere mostly through burning of coal.

Coal-burning is so hazardous that it has long been banned in Long Island, New York City, and most other metropolitan regions. However, the prevailing westerly winds in the north middle latitudes carry coal pollutants from rural parts of America's west and midwest eastward to the high-population areas in the northeast. Several northeastern states have banded together to sue the coal-burning states and the federal government for failing to enforce existing 36-year-old laws that would compel coal-fueled power plants and factories to either install available emission controls or to shut down (which they never would do because their profits are so high).

But even if all American coal-burning pollutants were brought under control, the U.S. and all other areas on earth face additional seriously looming coal-combustion hazards. China has thousands of power plants and factories that are using coal for heating and for generating electrical power. China's gigantic Three-Gorges Dam and reservoir can no more make a dent in the huge amount of atmospheric pollution being spewed out from its coal-burning sources, than all the thousands of dams and hydro-electrical power sources large and small in the U.S. can curtail existing pollution from burning of coal in this country.

Coal pollutants originating in China are beginning to be detected in North America, thousands of miles away from Asia. They are being transported across the Pacific, the world's largest ocean which covers roughly one-half of earth's entire surface. The culprit of course is the westerly wind belt in which China and America are both located. But this is not all; China is planning to build some 50 new coal-burning facilities in the coming year. Furthermore, India's energy needs will be equal to China's about 25 years from now when its population is projected to equal China's. We earthlings can resolve these pollution crises by using coal-fueled plants that operate only with fully effective pollutant-removal equipment - of if alternative energy sources can be developed that would replace coal and other air-polluting fuels. The only one on the horizon that might fit that bill has its own drawbacks. Are we ready to ramp up nuclear energy?