Let me make the case for coal from a rather different angle.
To understand coal, one must first travel back to a world so alien that it barely resembles the planet we inhabit today.
Not thousands of years. Not millions.
Roughly a billion years ago.
Back then, Earth was not the lush blue-green world we know. Complex life had not yet arrived. Forests did not exist. Animals did not exist. The atmosphere itself was profoundly different. Free oxygen—the gas upon which almost every complex organism now depends—was scarce to nonexistent. Nitrogen was already abundant, much as it is today, but carbon dioxide occupied a role far closer to that which oxygen occupies in the modern atmosphere.
The planet breathed carbon.
Most of that carbon dioxide emerged from Earth’s interior through volcanic activity and continual outgassing. The atmosphere was rich with it. Life, primitive though it was, seized the opportunity with enthusiasm. Early photosynthetic organisms consumed enormous quantities of atmospheric CO₂ and incorporated that carbon into living matter.
For a long time, this was a relatively balanced arrangement.
Then something extraordinary happened.
Plants evolved.
Not merely simple plants, but eventually woody plants capable of producing lignin—the substance that gives wood its rigidity and allows trees to stand tall rather than collapse into green puddles on the forest floor.
And here nature encountered an unexpected problem.
There were no organisms capable of efficiently digesting lignin.
Trees grew.
Trees died.
And instead of being recycled back into the atmosphere, vast quantities of carbon remained locked away inside dead plant matter.
Forests accumulated.
Swamps filled with fallen vegetation.
Layer upon layer of carbon-rich organic material piled up.
The carbon that had once floated freely through the atmosphere became imprisoned underground.
Over immense spans of time, pressure and heat transformed these gigantic deposits into what we now call coal.
In effect, Earth buried part of its atmosphere.
The consequences were profound.
Atmospheric CO₂ levels fell dramatically.
The very gas that had once dominated the skies was steadily removed from circulation and stored beneath the planet’s surface in geological vaults.
Had this process continued indefinitely, the consequences would have been catastrophic.
Life requires carbon.
Plants require carbon.
Photosynthesis requires carbon.
A world stripped too aggressively of atmospheric CO₂ becomes a world increasingly hostile to life itself.
Fortunately, evolution intervened.
Microorganisms eventually emerged that could digest lignin and break down woody material. The great carbon burial machine slowed. Carbon once again found pathways back into the atmosphere.
Had that not happened, Earth might have drifted toward something far less hospitable.
Not necessarily a dead planet, but certainly one vastly poorer in biological complexity.
Complex ecosystems may never have emerged.
Large animals may never have evolved.
Human beings would certainly not be sitting behind keyboards arguing about climate policy.
There would be nobody here to hold the argument.
This perspective introduces an uncomfortable reality into modern discussions about carbon dioxide.
The story is not simply that CO₂ is bad.
The story is not even that more CO₂ is necessarily worse.
Carbon dioxide is neither villain nor saint.
It is a fundamental ingredient of life.
Too much creates problems.
Too little creates problems.
The relevant question is not whether CO₂ exists.
The relevant question is where the optimal range lies.
There is a biological Goldilocks zone.
High enough to support vigorous plant growth.
Low enough to allow oxygen-breathing organisms to flourish comfortably.
Life has always existed within that balancing act.
What is often forgotten is how close geological history suggests Earth has come to carbon scarcity compared with its distant past.
For most of planetary history, atmospheric CO₂ concentrations were vastly higher than they are today.
Plants evolved under conditions that modern agriculture would consider extraordinarily carbon-rich.
Greenhouses routinely enrich their atmospheres with additional CO₂ because growers understand something obvious: plants generally grow faster and more efficiently when more carbon is available.
Carbon is food.
That is not ideology.
It is biology.
Coal, viewed through this lens, becomes something rather different from the caricature presented in modern political discourse.
Coal is not merely fuel.
Coal is ancient atmospheric carbon.
It is the fossilized remains of a biological process that locked away enormous quantities of carbon over hundreds of millions of years.
Every lump represents a fragment of a prehistoric atmosphere buried beneath our feet.
Burning coal does not create carbon from nothing.
It releases carbon that once belonged to the living system of the planet in the first place.
One may debate the wisdom, speed, scale, or consequences of doing so.
Those are legitimate discussions.
But pretending that carbon itself is some alien poison injected into a pristine Earth misses the point entirely.
Carbon is life.
Always was.
Always will be.
The truly fascinating question is not whether carbon dioxide matters.
Of course it matters.
The fascinating question is whether humanity has correctly identified where the balance actually lies—or whether future generations may look back at our era and conclude that we spent decades fighting the very substance that made complex life possible in the first place.
History has a dark sense of humor.
It would not be the first time humanity declared war on something it fundamentally misunderstood.
https://www.netzerowatch.com/all-papers/coal-power-and-national-security