Good, so instead of PEAK OIL, we trade for 50 years before PEAK COAL. Brilliant. Like paying off one credit card with another -- because that way the bill never comes due.
Coal is a nonstarter because, like oil, the resource is limited -- we'll maybe buy ourselves some time, but we haven't solved the problem. The problem we have is that we're using a limited and non-renewable resource to power our society. Until we get off nonrenewables, we haven't dealt with the actual problem. The actual problem is that we're fueling our economy and society with stuff we'll run out of. It's short sighted and stupid. Any fool can see that a society can't outlast its power supply. But we've allowed this to happen to US, mostly in the name of convienience -- it's easy to burn things for fuel, it's easy to use a fuel that you essentially only need to dig up. And it's easy to push the ultimate painful reality as far into the future as possible.