Bill, I didn't say the world should use coal. The question was "why are people still doing this?" and my answer was that the world does use so much coal that it would take a long time to retool the world's industry in order for it to use alternative sources of energy.

From what little I've read, it seems that the EU is already so much less dependent on coal than it had been that the coal industry sees its future there as a "challenge" (i.e. they're worried!). So perhaps this is the beginning of progress; a few decades or centuries down the road, the world may not use coal anymore at all. But in the meantime, people will still be "doing this."