![](https://i.imgur.com/CLvY2jA.png")
02-11-2021, 07:37 AM
By ANIRUDDHA GHOSAL
today
DHANBAD, India (AP) — Every day, Raju gets on his bicycle and unwillingly pedals the world a tiny bit closer to climate catastrophe.
Every day, he straps half a dozen sacks of coal pilfered from mines — up to 200 kilograms, or 440 pounds — to the reinforced metal frame of his bike. Driving mostly at night to avoid the police and the heat, he transports the coal 16 kilometers (10 miles) to traders who pay him US$2.
Thousands of others do the same.
......
Earth desperately needs people to stop burning coal, the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change — including the intense flooding that has cost agricultural jobs in India. But people rely on coal. It is the world’s biggest source of fuel for electric power and so many, desperate like Raju, depend on it for their very lives.
“The poor have nothing but sorrow ... but so many people, they’ve been saved by coal,” Raju said.
Alok Sharma, the United Kingdom’s president-designate of the conference, said in May that he hoped the conference would mark the moment where coal is left “in the past where it belongs.”
While that may be possible for some developed nations, it is not so simple for developing countries.
They argue they should be allowed the “carbon space” to grow as developed nations have, by burning cheap fuels like coal, which is used in industrial processes such as steelmaking along with electric power generation. On average, the typical American uses 12 times more electricity than the typical Indian. There are over 27 million people in India who don’t have electricity at all.
Power demand in India is expected to grow faster than anywhere in the world over the next two decades as the economy grows and ever more extreme heat increases demand for air conditioning that so much the rest of the world takes for granted.
Meeting that demand will not fall to people like Raju, but to Coal India, already the world’s largest miner, which aims to increase production to over 1 billion tons a year by 2024.
......
there are roughly 300,000 people working directly with government-owned coal mines, earning fixed salaries and benefits. And there are nearly 4 million people in India whose livelihoods are directly or indirectly linked to coal
Lots of photos and full article at: https://apnews.com/article/climate-scien...e1f4aecf25
today
DHANBAD, India (AP) — Every day, Raju gets on his bicycle and unwillingly pedals the world a tiny bit closer to climate catastrophe.
Every day, he straps half a dozen sacks of coal pilfered from mines — up to 200 kilograms, or 440 pounds — to the reinforced metal frame of his bike. Driving mostly at night to avoid the police and the heat, he transports the coal 16 kilometers (10 miles) to traders who pay him US$2.
Thousands of others do the same.
......
Earth desperately needs people to stop burning coal, the biggest single source of greenhouse gases, to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change — including the intense flooding that has cost agricultural jobs in India. But people rely on coal. It is the world’s biggest source of fuel for electric power and so many, desperate like Raju, depend on it for their very lives.
“The poor have nothing but sorrow ... but so many people, they’ve been saved by coal,” Raju said.
Alok Sharma, the United Kingdom’s president-designate of the conference, said in May that he hoped the conference would mark the moment where coal is left “in the past where it belongs.”
While that may be possible for some developed nations, it is not so simple for developing countries.
They argue they should be allowed the “carbon space” to grow as developed nations have, by burning cheap fuels like coal, which is used in industrial processes such as steelmaking along with electric power generation. On average, the typical American uses 12 times more electricity than the typical Indian. There are over 27 million people in India who don’t have electricity at all.
Power demand in India is expected to grow faster than anywhere in the world over the next two decades as the economy grows and ever more extreme heat increases demand for air conditioning that so much the rest of the world takes for granted.
Meeting that demand will not fall to people like Raju, but to Coal India, already the world’s largest miner, which aims to increase production to over 1 billion tons a year by 2024.
......
there are roughly 300,000 people working directly with government-owned coal mines, earning fixed salaries and benefits. And there are nearly 4 million people in India whose livelihoods are directly or indirectly linked to coal
Lots of photos and full article at: https://apnews.com/article/climate-scien...e1f4aecf25
