Thought Provoking: We’re Burning More Coal Than Ever Thanks to China

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-12-18/we-re-burning-more-coal-than-ever-thanks-to-china?
"The UK celebrated Oct. 1 as the first day in nearly 150 years when its
power plants didn’t burn a single lump of coal to generate electricity.
The moment was hailed by politicians as a sign of the progress against
fossil fuels. It was also completely irrelevant.
The very same day the UK went without coal-fired electricity, the world
burned roughly 24 million metric tons of coal. Let me put the statistics
into perspective: The world consumed on Oct. 1 in one single day nearly
five times more of the rock than Britain used during the whole of 2023.
Yes, five times more in one day than in a year1.
Coal demand set a record high in 2024, according to the International
Energy Agency’s annual report published on Wednesday. Considering the
commodity is the most important contributor to global warming, its
consumption trends matter enormously for the fight against climate
change. The report makes for a depressing reading: The planet is losing
to our unquenchable demand for king coal. Forget all the slogans about
consigning coal to history. We’re on a path to consigning the planet to
history.
As the IEA puts it, “coal is often considered a fuel of the past, but
global consumption of it has doubled in the past three decades.” Worse,
not only has usage grown a lot – particularly in China and India – but
demand will keep rising for the foreseeable future."