Peak Coal? China Running Short

This year, China will import more coal than it exports for the first time, and by 2010 it will be running 100 million tons short, according to state-run media. The extraordinary figure reflects China's extraordinary growth.

By some estimates, China's use of coal will exceed all other countries combined in the next 25 years, as it continues to build another coal-fired power plant about every week or so. And these plants aren't being built even to current U.S. standards -- let alone the standards necessary to curb greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The plants belch out copious amounts of sulfur, nitrogen and mercury -- which cause smog, acid rain and toxic contamination, respectively. Some of that pollution drifts as far as the U.S. West coast. In other words, China's coal problem is the world's coal problem. Massive clouds of pollution are in store if the rapid consumption of coal in China isn't curbed.

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