Maybe everybody knew this already, but I was surprised to read about the extent of coal mine fires world-wide, and their contribution to global warming.
I hadn’t looked at Parade Magazine in the Sunday paper for years, but browsed through it yesterday and found this article on the problem of coal mine fires. The top estimate of 200 billion tons of coal per year in China alone is hard to comprehend. This morning I googled for more articles and found one from the Smithsonian magazine dated May ‘05, along with other publications that picked up the story.
Parade brought out the story again to make note of a possible solution- nitrogen laced foam, that they say was recently used to extinguish a mine fire in W. Virginia.
I tell ya, between coal mine fires and bovine flatulence, it’d be easy to feel cynical or hopeless about the value of any efforts at reducing one’s own, miniscule personal “carbon footprint”. Nevertheless, I think the point of doing so is in looking at how we (Christians) are living as responsible stewards of whatever little fraction of God’s creation He has entrusted to us. Just because I can’t do anything about China doesn’t mean I get to pee in the (global) pool, too.
Filed under: Christianity, Environment, Life, Politics
