290 down, 241 to go

The good news: 290 U.S. coal plants have closed in the past decade. No new ones will ever open.

The bad news: There still 241 U.S. coal plants relentlessly pumping carbon into the atmosphere, threatening human survival.

Coal, especially hard, anthracite coal, is in my heritage. My father’s family immigrated from Coal Township, Northumberland County, Shamokin, PA to Chicago in 1923, for jobs that didn’t destroy the lungs in the prime of life.

Just a few years earlier 181,000 minors labored in those anthracite hell holes. Today, it’s a couple of thousand, mostly picking out anthracite coal from the slag heaps of waste from previous mining.

Coal is our worst fuel for pouring endless CO2 into the atmosphere, turning Mother Earth into a life suffocating green house. Last year Uncle Sam spewed 4.5 billion metric tons of the stuff up there, 13% of the world’s total. Coal is also the most expensive way to generate electricity, nearly double that of solar and wind.

At 75, I’ll likely miss climate catastrophe. Can’t say that with certainty for my kids and especially the grandkids if we don’t act now.

That’s why we must all call for the end of King Coal, more aptly named Killer Coal. We can’t wait for those last 241 coal plants to just fade away. Mother Earth may fade away first.