True, but the point is that the pollution king can see the effects of an unregulated carbon feeding frenzy, and others can too, making it less of a foregone conclusion than you present.

The issue here is that mining was such a tradition here in the UK, that communities were formed around it. There's no such thing for oil drilling, unless it's fracking really. But despite what she did, I guess getting off coal was good for us, even though her intentions had nothing to do with the environment, it was more revenge for what miners did in 1974 than anything.

But seriously we need to change how we think, just because China is pumping out more pollution and emissions than ever before, don't mean we can't do our own little bit to help with climate change. China only uses coal so much (70% of all it's energy!) because it's very very cheap. If we invested far more in cleaner, renewable energy forms so they became cheaper, then surely industrialising countries like China would adopt the newer and cleaner forms of energy. The smog we have seen in Beijing and other cities is of great concern to them but they won't risk anything that lowers growth, so we still have our part in making renewables cheaper and far more efficient so that the developing world will adopt them.

They are already destroying there agricultural output by building factories on their best farmland, which is the south eastern regions, while factories are aloud to dump their waste straight into rivers contaminating ground water and thus the crops too.

First off... I think your GREATLY understimating how much coal is used a day.

Secondly, towns totally do spring up where oil does.

Thirdly... even if we developed the perfect clean burning renewable energy today... it'd take decades to be remotely competietive with "dirty" fuels.

By the time clean renewables come up, we almost ceratinly wil be over the tipping point.

That's only assuming they stand something to lose from global climate change.  A lot of countries actually have a decent amount to gain from it. 

Think how much Russia would stand to gain if the Northern Europeon Waters warmed up and they could ship oil to norway year round... heck their agirculture system would actually get a boost too.  We're lucky that most of these countries like Canada and Norway tend to be already on the bandwagon....

but... there are going to be a lot of countries in South America and Africa who are more then willing to put up with it... so there people can eat.

Worrying about the effects of future global warming isn't really a concern for people who need to worry about eating.

How do i underestimate how much coal is used? I said it's 70% of their energy source, which is a ton.

And yes towns do spring up around oil wells BUT they haven't existed for hundreds or even thousands of years like coal mining comunities have. The impact of such communities being destroyed is very different.  

Well we should just get on with creating alternative fuels now then. I already except climate change isn't preventable (because we didn't cause it to start with!, it's a natural event), we must adapt to it. 

I think we should wait for the science to be sound behind whether or not humans are aiding in climate change before attempting to limit our carbon footprint.

Not to mention CO2 is one of several greenhouse gases and one that is necessary. There are even studies comparing temperature to CO2 level from ice cores which state that CO2 lags temperature.

1) Not just China though.  For example in the US... 42% of our Power is provided by Coal.  In the UK it's 21%.

2) Why?  Why does how long a community is around matter?  Once you get past 2 generations what does it matter?  People here now don't remember back thousands of years.  Ask someone who's community goes back and i don't think they really give a fuck about how long the town has been there and care a little bit more about things like feeding their families.

It's also worth noting.  Coal and Oil Communties DO collapse.  The US has many depeleted coal towns just like the UK, but with no big government boogyman shutting them down.  They collpased because... they ran out of coal.  In general expecting such communties to last forever when based on a finite resource is foolishness.

3)  We already are working on alternative fuels.  Really it's not so much a matter of the tech being expensive though... as combustable fuels being cheap.

Well that and energy storing solutions being either shit or focused around fairly rare mateierals.

Something like a migration to natural gas would be a better short term option.  (though potentially useless.)

1) If we use so much even now, we shouldn't of shut down all coal mines. Although, we should try to move on from coal though.

2) It's just a tradition that was here that's all. Something, people don't care about until it's taken away from them. I have definately known communities to collapse, for example with fishing towns collapsing since trawling became a big thing. But the problem is, people do expect their community to last forever. It's not imaginable to most of us. 

3) I would support a major shift to nuclear, but not after chernobyl and the disaster in Japan last year and also all the waste they produce. Solar, wind and hydro must be made better. It must be possible to install very thin transparent solar panels within windows in the near future, if that was possible that would start to sort out our energy problem already, while having mini wind turbines on rooftops (don't worry, these ideas sound mad i admit it lol). and why must there be made with "rare" minerals, why not something more common?