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tate-owned news outlets reported this month that the government would ban the use of coal in Beijing and other urban areas by 2020 in an effort to reduce the noxious air pollution that chokes many cities. In July, a Chinese academic who is also a senior lawmaker said the government was considering a national cap on coal use as soon as 2016.

But he and other officials have provided few details — and, indeed, have sent conflicting, even disturbing, signals about their plans. Some measures China is considering could actually exacerbate climate change. One particularly misguided plan, for instance, would involve building 50 large industrial facilities in western China to convert coal into synthetic natural gas.

pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in 2010, according to the Global Burden of Disease study, published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

Faustian bargain

At this point, coal mining accounts for only one-sixteenth of 1 percent of overall U.S. employment; shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9.