Published in Dawn on May 10 2018
Fumes seep and spiral / Canaries in the coal mine / Chirp their last faint song. — haiku
HOW long will the demise of coal as an energy source take? When will the world finally pull out its miners from the dark, dingy and dangerous shafts? Not very soon, but not in the distant future either. The era of coal is waning. Developed countries are burning less coal for power generation and going for a mix of cleaner renewable energy and natural gas. China, too, is increasingly using solar energy and producing 60 per cent of the total solar cell manufactured in the world. In 2017, the world installed 98 gigawatts of new solar power projects as the cost of solar has fallen by 70pc since 2010.
Yet the demand for coal and the compulsion to extract it at great social cost is increasing in developing economies like Pakistan because coal is cheaper and exists in one’s own backyard. Social cost, in terms of loss of human lives and the mauling of the ecosystem, means little. Had human life and nature mattered, policymakers would have come up with regulations that respected and safeguarded the lives of workers and the surrounding habitat. Recently in two separate accidents of gas explosion and cave-in, at least 23 coal miners lost their lives in Balochistan’s coalfields.
Zeenat Hisam 