The Grim Promise of India's Coal-Powered Future
Emissions billow from smokestacks at a coal-fired power plant near residential property in Badarpur, India.
Photographer: Kuni Takahashi/BloombergBurning coal is both a proven way to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and the most dangerous fuel driving global warming. The United Nations has set itself the goal of reconciling these two things, and the results are shaky at best.
Energy ministries from more than 30 nations are meeting at the UN this week, at the Sustainable Development for All Forum, to debate how best to supply electricity to the 1.3 billion people who don't have it—at least 250 million of whom are Indians. The drive toward universal energy access is just one element of the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, a super-ambitious worldwide to-do list that the nations would like to finalize in New York in September, shortly before they meet again in Paris in December to finish a climate change treaty. That's the shaky part.