Coal and Climate Change: Between a Rock and a Hard Place

If the United States, China and the European Union do not commit to a programme in which their overall carbon dioxide emissions fall rapidly soon after 2020, continue falling for the rest of the century and then stay low forever, we are probably not going to avoid dangerous climate change. But China in particular can probably only make that commitment if it is able to keep on using coal for as long as necessary, while at the same time making the required big cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. The only way to do this is carbon capture and storage: geosequestration