I've made no secret of my contempt for coal, sharing David Roberts' opinion that it is, as much as anything else in the world, "the enemy of the human race."

And as tragic as the stories are the emerge from America's coal mines, what's happening in China is outright criminal. Try to get your head around this--last year, 3,786 workers were killed in China's coal mines. That's more deaths than were suffered on September 11th. And it's happening every year. In fact, these 3,786 deaths were far fewer than in recent years in China, as safety regulations are thankfully starting to take root. Such regulations are still wildly uneven, however, as smaller-scale, privately owned mines still operate with little to no oversight, rushing to dig out the increasingly valuable fossil to feed the nation's energy hunger.

NRDC has been working since 1996 to help the Chinese government to develop a clean, sustainable energy system, a project that now seems more important than ever.