Coal is clean...

...but it wasn't always like this.

I think that part of the problem with public acceptance of coal today is the association within people minds of how it was used in the past. Take for example this recent news story from the BBC.
They quite rightly talk about the heavy emissions from coal which have ended up in the artic - before moving on to talk about how the game has been changed, the emissions have been cleaned up, and the problem of increased heavy metal emissions (from what is know as BAT - best available technology plants) has largely gone away.

Such emissions are relavtively easy to clean up, since most metals are contained within the smoke from the boiler - by collecting most of the particles which are in the smoke the metal emissions are drastically reduced.

A good example of this mindset is when I recently flew back from the United States - I had some coal samples with me which I couldn't take on board the plance, since they are a "fuel".
Fine, but by the time the samples would have started to do anything the cardboard box and plastic bags they were wrapped in would have been turned to ash.
As would all the clothes of everyone on board.

So it comes down to public perception - as you read the article do you think that coal is a dangerous technology, or one that has cleaned up its act (at least inside the EU) sufficiently well to be included in todays energy mix?