I was reading an article recently about Chinese coal-fired power plants, although I can't remember which publication it was. In any event, the article described a city that was an hour or two from Beijing, which has made a great deal of money from coal. The plus side was that many former peasants are now driving Mercedes and there are luxury items and hotels available now. One of the high-end hotels even has a large piece of coal in a display case, to remind the residents how they became wealthy. The big downside is mainly the pollution; one photo accompanying the article showed the coal soot and the residents covering their faces as they walk by. The article even noted how all of the coal pollution generated by China, alone, eventually migrates (a few days after being released) to the United States. We have enough coal pollution of our own to worry about. It's hard to blame the Chinese people for wanting to embrace Western goods and to some extent, the Western lifestyle, but it's also easy to see how unsustainable this new found wealth is. Someone told me recently how the coal mining practices currently in China are worse and less safe than those used originally in the United States. The U.S., India and China really need to work together on some serious emissions caps to limit all of the CO2 and other pollution entering our atmosphere from coal-fired power plants. Yet, when we all want the good things in life and the energy needed to obtain those things, how is this going to work?