A recent tweet trumpeted a report that 250,000 Chinese died in 2013 due to smog from coal (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coal-emissions-smog-deaths). The report on the deaths came partly from Greenpeace, of course.
There is little question that coal is dangerous. It is dangerous to mine. Its emissions are a problem; coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. Yet coal is cheap, abundant, and the demand for it is vast. As Justin Lin wrote in 2009 on the World Bank’s blog:
There are roughly 1.6 billion people in developing countries–700 million of whom are in Africa and 550 million in South Asia–who lack access to electricity. Because coal is often cheap and abundant, and the need for electricity is so great, coal plants are going to be built with or without our [World Bank] support.
The question that should spring to everyone’s mind is “how many died in China from cold or indoor pollution before the electrification that the coal plant brought with it?” The Manichaeistic, black/white premise of something being all good (e.g., Renewable Energy) or all bad (e.g., Fossil Fuel) is at best, uncritical thinking, and at worst, lying.
Greenpeace, the report’s author, is of course fretting about climate change, and its answer is to turn back the clock. I am a luke-warmer in regards to climate change; I think the climate is much less sensitive to greenhouse gases than the Global Climate Models (GCM) that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggest. But even a full-throated supporter of climate change, such as Mark Lynas, sees the need for coal in places such as China and India:
The costs of poverty – which includes millions of preventable deaths of young children, lack of access to water and sanitation, reduced livelihood prospects, large-scale hunger and malnutrition, and so on… are clearly much greater than the direct costs of coal burning, and this equation probably still holds even when the future damages from climate change are factored in. – Mark Lynas, 2014, India’s coal conundrum
To be clear, the possible deaths of people due to the burning of coal are regrettable. Scrubbers would ameliorate the particulates that cause the health problems; as China and India get richer their people will become more vocal in their calls for cleaner air. At the moment, jobs, cleaner drinking water, sanitation, and food on the table appear to be of greater importance.
Nullius in Verba 
China’s dirty air problems are not just coal. There was a good article about China’s most influential urban architect and planner, Wu Liangyong, in the NY Times very recently. He bemoaned the fact that city planners promoted automobile use instead of more mass transit and built such tall and huge buildings promoting high density and other city ills that contribute to their air pollution.
I don’t disagree with anything you say. Still Los Angeles, known by the native Americans as the place of a thousand smokes, a city “designed” (just happened, really) for cars, has cleaner air now than it did in the 1940s-1980s, due primarily to changes in technology. Scrubbers installed on smokestacks and catalytic converters and fuel injection, etc., on cars has made a difference, despite a larger population.
It’s easy for us with all the prevalent luxuries of temperature moderation (heating, cooling), clean water, etc. to point fingers at the negative aspects of these improvements. These of the same genre probably bemoaned electricity, vaccinations, plastic…. Another air pollution factor in much of the orient is the high prevalence of smoking. The personal responsibility doesn’t seem to be noteworthy; blame the big guys!!
Quite true. The Greenpeace study does not seem to acknowledge other factors.
Below is a quote from the Guardian story (emphasis mine):
My question remains: absent the burning of coal what are the numbers?