Coal and climate

While the United States is no longer building new coal fired power plants and is converting existing coal plants over to natural gas, countries like China and India are continuing to build new coal plants. The same thing is happening in South Africa. The price of oil has now dropped to where it is competitive with coal and the United States has an almost unlimited supply of oil. Oil is much cleaner than coal producing far less carbon dioxide, far less acid rain and far fewer heavy metals like mercury and lead. Shipping oil to Asia would have a significant impact on global trade while cleaning up the air pollution that is killing millions in China and India. Japan is replacing their nuke plants with coal when they could be using oil. Africa is building new coal plants. While all this is going on countries are holding meetings discussing the problem of climate change. Does anyone see the makings of a deal here? Is it possible that an outsider like Trump, the man who wrote, “The Art of the Deal”, could come up with a plan to save the planet from what President Obama says is our greatest threat? Are we so tangled up in our politics that we can’t see the forest for the trees.