Coming clean: the truth and future of coal in Asia and Pacific

Coal is abundant and affordable in the Asia Pacific region, and for the foreseeable future could be used to meet the region's growing energy needs, but what becomes of those needs when air is too dirty to breathe; water is too polluted to drink; soil too contaminated to grow crops; land is unfit for habitation; and global warming unleashes unimaginable environmental disasters? Who will the industry serve when people's basic survival is threatened by the pollution it produces? This report examines the straightforward social and environmental truths of the continued use of coal in the Asia Pacific region, against the more complex reality of skyrocketing demands for energy in developing economies, and the political and bureaucratic growing pains of such needs.