It’s nice to be able to record some  good news.

Chris Mooney, in the Washington Post, reports that natural gas replaced coal as the largest source of electricity generation in the US for two months this year.  30% of the cost of generation involves coal transportation, whereas natural gas costs a fraction of that figure.  The industry is busy building combined cycle plants to allow them to use gas.  The current usage is one third coal, one third gas, and one third nuclear.  The coal industry has seen a wave of plant retirements and is threatened by the government’s Clean Power Plan, aimed at limiting greenhouse emissions from power plants.  The industry has been told by experts to forget the idea of building new coal- fired plants.

You may not like fracking – and who wants to live in an area with multiple earthquakes –  but America is better off without burning so much coal.  And it allows Obama to go to the Paris climate change talks and claim some progress.  India and China are now turning out to be the two biggest problems when it comes to pollution.