I have talked about what coal pollution can do to you. Now lets see how much coal we actually use.
Alomst 50% of the electricity produced in this country is from coal. Thats 2,013,179 thousand megawatt hours. This is the most by far with nuclear coming up second with 781,986 thousand megawatts. From all of this comes 2,513,609 thousand metric tons of carbon dioxide, 10,340 thousand metric tons of sulfur dioxide, and 3,961 thousand metric tons of nitrogen oxides. All of this in just one year. And every year its rising.
To make all of this electricity and pollution, 1,038,962 thousand short tons of coal must be burned each year. And where does most of this coal come from: deep underground. Large open pit strip mines are destroying the earth just to get to this energy source. And now, most of the coal in getting deeper and deeper and it is costing more, both money and lives, to get to it.
