Earlier this week, BP issued its annual "Statistical Review of World Energy"
report. According to the report, coal was the fastest-growing fossil
fuel worldwide last year, and "coal's share of global primary energy
consumption reached 30.1 percent, the highest since 1970". Despite a
decrease in coal usage by North America and Europe over the past several
years (due in large part to cheaper natural gas), global coal
consumption has risen to new highs, driven by the growing and
power-hungry markets of China and India. And, as might be expected,
worldwide carbon emissions grew again last year, by another 2.1
percent. Despite increasing urgency from the scientific community to
reduce carbon emissions to head off climate disaster, and the small but
growing use of renewable energy sources, coal appears to be the fuel of
choice at the moment, and predictions are that its usage will continue
to rise. [32 photos]
A Ukrainian coal miner waits for a bus after finishing his shift at a
coal mine outside Donetsk, Ukraine, on May 20, 2014. While coal
consumption has dropped in Europe and North America in recent years, it
has risen sharply in Asia. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) 
The bucket-wheel of a giant excavator removes the first layer of soil
for the expansion of the nearby Welzow open-pit lignite coal mine on
August 20, 2010 near Drebkau, Germany. The area of northern Saxony and
southern Brandenburg is scarred with active and former mines, and a
large-scale project was underway to flood the massive pits and convert
them into lakes for tourism. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images) #
Excavators work in an open coal mine near Grevenbroich, Germany, viewed on Google Earth. (copy; Google, Inc.) #
Explosives are detonated at an A & G Coal Corporation surface
mining operation in the Appalachian Mountains on April 16, 2012 in Wise
County, Virginia. Critics refer to this type of mining as "mountaintop
removal mining" which has destroyed 500 mountain peaks and at least
1,200 miles of streams while leading to increased flooding. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) #
A miner holds a piece of coal outside an unregulated coal mine in
Sabinas, Mexico, on January 15, 2013. Everyday, thousands of miners go
to work in the unregulated coals mines of northern Mexico knowing they
may not return. Facing death on a daily basis has become a fact of life
for these men as they struggle to scrape out a living in an environment
bereft of rules and regulations, lacking even the most basic equipment. (Reuters/Daniel Becerril) #
In this photograph taken on January 29, 2013, Indian coal miner Surya
Limu (inside hole), squats with other miners by a fire to keep warm
hours before dawn, inside the face of a 50 meter deep shaft in Rymbai
village in the northeastern state of Meghalaya, India. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images) #
A crane lifts miners out of a 300ft deep mine shaft, as they head out
for their lunch break on April 13, 2011 near the village of Latyrke near
Lad Rymbai, in the district of Jaintia Hills, India. In the Jaintia
hills, located in India's far North East state of Meghalaya, miners
descend to great depths on slippery, rickety wooden ladders. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #
22 year old Shyam Rai from Nepal pauses as he works, digging out coal,
using hands and a pick to get at the seams of coal that lay 300 ft below
the surface at a coal mine on April 13, 2011 in the Jaintia Hills,
India. Children and adults squeeze into rat-hole like tunnels in
thousands of privately owned and unregulated mines, extracting coal with
their hands or primitive tools and no safety equipment. Workers can
earn as much as 150 USD per week or 30,000 Rupees per month,
significantly higher than the national average of 15 USD per day. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #
38 year old Prabhat Sinha, from Assam, carries a load of coal weighing
60kg, supported by a head-strap, as he ascends the staircase of a coal
mine on April 16, 2011 near the village of Khliehriat, India. After
traversing treacherous mountain roads, the coal is delivered to
neighboring Bangladesh and to Assam from where it is distributed all
over India, to be used primarily for power generation and as a source of
fuel in cement plants. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #
A miner bends over a wooden crate to empty the basket strapped to his
back filled with about 60-70 kilos of wet coal after exiting a deep coal
mine shaft near Rimbay village in the Indian northeastern state of
Meghalaya. Accidents and quiet burials are commonplace, with years of
uncontrolled drilling making the mines unstable and liable to collapse
at any moment. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images) #
A train is loaded with coal at the Borodinsky opencast colliery, near
the Siberian town of Borodino, some 152 km (94 mi) east of Krasnoyarsk,
on November 15, 2012. The Borodinsky colliery is the biggest opencast
coal mine in Russia - 7 km (4 miles) long and 100 meters (328 feet) deep
- was built from 1945 to 1949 by Gulag prisoners to produce about 20
million tons of coal a year now. (Reuters/Ilya Naymushin) #
Bucket excavators stand illuminated at the snow-covered Vereinigtes
Schleenhain open-pit coal mine on January 25, 2013 near Deutzen,
Germany. The mine, which is operated by Mibrag, is one of several across
eastern Germany that produce lignite coal for local electricity
production. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images) #
A boy looks out over an open-cast coal mine as the glowing embers of an
underground coal fire are seen below in the village of Guhanwadi on
February 11, 2012 near Jharia, India. Villagers in India's Eastern State
of Jharkhand scavenge coal illegally from open-cast coal mines to earn a
few dollars a day. Claiming that decades old underground burning coal
seams threatened the homes of villagers, the government relocated over
2,300 families to towns like Belgaria. Villagers claim they were
promised schools, hospitals and free utilities for two years, which they
did not receive. (Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images) #
A donkey carrying sacks of coal walks through the narrow tunnels of a
coal mine, in Choa Saidan Shah in Punjab province, Pakistan, on April
29, 2014. Coal miners in Chao Saidan Shah use donkeys to transport coal
from the depths of the mines to the surface. The donkeys make around 20
trips per day carrying sacks weighing about 20 kg (44 lbs) each. The
work is dangerous with the constant risk of cave-ins. The miners say
they do what they can to care for the animals, with their limited
resources, but the difficult conditions mean the donkeys' life
expectancy is 12-13 years. (Reuters/Sara Farid) #
A worker moves coal briquettes onto a pedicab at a coal distribution
business in Huaibei, central China's Anhui province, on January 30,
2013. Environmental concerns -- particularly over the use of coal --
were pushed to the top of the agenda after much of the country was
covered with a blanket of pollution in early 2013. (AFP/Getty Images) #
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