Big Coal Reading Guide & Discussion Questions

Book Club Discussion Questions

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For supplemental discussion material see our Beyond the Book article, Coal and our BookBrowse Review of Big Coal.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

About the Book

For most of us, the word "coal" conjures up images of puffing smokestacks in a nineteenth-century industrial city or the dark, dank atmosphere of a coal mine. Few of us think of coal when we power up our laptop, turn on the television, or load our iPod. But we should. Few of us fully realize the role that coal plays in America and around the world.

Coal executives, government officials, and energy companies have long promoted coal's virtues as a cheap, plentiful, homegrown source of energy. But coal has a dark side in the toll it takes on our health, our environment, and our communities.

In the tradition of Rachel Carson and Eric Schlosser, acclaimed journalist Jeff Goodell travels around the United States to examine the faulty assumptions underlying coal's dominance and to shatter the myth that cheap coal is the energy source for the twenty-first century. Big Coal is an intelligent, frank look at how and why coal has maintained a prominent role in the energy conversation. Through hard-hitting investigative reporting, historical background, and business analysis, Goodell highlights issues all Americans should understand about coal, why we need to care, and what needs to change.


Questions for Discussion

We hope the following questions will stimulate discussion as well as provide a deeper understanding of Big Coal for every reader.

1. In Big Coal, Jeff Goodell discusses the economic, health, and environmental implications of coal use. Many are invisible to the end user: we don't typically think about how much raw fuel it takes to supply electricity to run our computers or microwaves, or how many pollutants enter the atmosphere as a result, or how many cases of asthma the pollutants may trigger, for instance. Did you find Goodell's measure of coal's hidden costs alarming? Why or why not?
2. In the face of the global oil crisis, coal power has gained prominence as a supposedly cleaner, more plentiful alternative fuel. But the often-cited estimate that the United States has 250 years' worth of cheap, accessible coal available has been revealed to be a gross exaggeration. How was this misinformation introduced into the energy dialogue, and what factors have perpetuated it? What other inaccuracies have been uncovered? If this most basic assumption about our energy reserves is wrong, how must we revise our plans for energy use in the future?
3. Goodell cites some staggering statistics: coal-fired power plants in the United States are responsible for more than one-third of the emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere each year; in just the past twenty years, air pollution from coal plants has shortened the lives of more than half a million Americans. Yet coal presently supplies more than half the electricity consumed in the United States. Given the detrimental effects of burning coal, why is this substance in such widespread use? What are some of the alternatives to coal energy, and how do these sources compare to coal?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Mariner Books. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.