America prides itself on being a technologically advanced nation, but our country's heavy dependence on coal mining and coal energy mocks the term. The United States has the world's highest per-capita emissions of carbon dioxide, and the nation's fleet of coal-burning plants dominates our national emissions.
The answer is at hand. Leaders of the world's largest industrial economies have agreed to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels as part of efforts to combat climate change. The agreement -- backed by countries that have rarely been cooperative on environmental matters, such as Russia, China and India -- is an important first step in de-emphasizing the use of fossil fuels, particularly coal.
Eliminating such subsidies by 2020 would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent by 2050, according to data from the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
The question is: Will any political leader promote this essential formula and call for immediate steps to make this happen?
The United States still obtains half of its electricity from power plants fueled by coal, which is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel and leaves the largest footprint on the environment. Despite the coal industry's efforts to portray coal as "clean," there is no sure way to capture carbon dioxide from a coal smokestack or remove carbon from coal before it is burned. A large coal plant emits more than 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day. Last year, U.S. coal plants poured more than 2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.
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