I disagree on both counts. Just because something is an enemy now doesn't mean it always has been; the scale of coal use is the problem, and early industrial levels happening today would have far less detrimental effect.
Second, coal is not the desirable thing of modernization: energy is, and energy is available through many means. China seems to be very fond of solar, for example. Also the Chinese pay the externalities just as we all do; and if you've visited China your aware that they see perhaps more pollution than the rest of the world. I have no doubt that these externalities made visible will influence the nation to take them realistically, which we in the western world are not.
Even a wealthy economy like the US still draws almost half of its electricity from coal [1]. If Americans couldn't afford to switch to solar already, how are the Chinese supposed to?
>the Chinese pay the externalities just as we all do
And so did the US. The first (very weak) Clean Air Act was not passed until 1963 [2], at which point the economy was already very energy intensive, very wealthy, and could afford to take an economic hit by implementing more stringent environmental regulations. The holier-than-thou crowd expects China to hobble itself with environmental regulations in advance of the US, while developing an economy that is still decades behind. All this preaching is of course done from countries that have gone through centuries of unrestricted industrial development, and while taking full advantage of the benefits thereof.
Your implicit argument seems to be that not using coal is just too expensive in some sense. The question is not yes/ no to coal, but rather how much coal. This is a numerical argument, that the free market would solve automatically if the price of coal were nearer to its cost.
But how do you calculate such a cost - keeping in mind that you would also need to factor in non-environmental benefits like new inventions, more free time for education, higher quality of life, etc.
I'm all for a system that's fair. I just object to environmentalists deciding what the true cost/benefit analysis is. Their squeaky wheel one-issue outlook has heavily biased the discussion.
Second, coal is not the desirable thing of modernization: energy is, and energy is available through many means. China seems to be very fond of solar, for example. Also the Chinese pay the externalities just as we all do; and if you've visited China your aware that they see perhaps more pollution than the rest of the world. I have no doubt that these externalities made visible will influence the nation to take them realistically, which we in the western world are not.