Environmental and Health costs associated with non-renewable energy extraction should be included in the price of the resource. Non-renewable resources cannot be produced within human life spans and will be depleted if we extract them faster than they are regenerated (Molles, p.263). Since these resources have been historically used and profited on, without much concern for the environmental affects until fairly recently, the cost of these resources needs to take environmental and health costs of them into consideration to encourage sustainable and responsible management of these resources by making sustainable practices more profitable.

To illustrate this point, let’s look at coal production. Coal provides 27% of all the energy we produce globally (Riche, Energy Mix). It is created from terrestrial plant matter being buried underground and heated over the course of millions of years (SPRS, p.174); because of this, coal cannot be produced within human life spans, making it a non-renewable resource. Mining of coal can have major environmental affects. There are 2 main methods of coal extraction: strip mining and mountain top removal mining. Strip mining is a type of surface mining that is used when the coal deposit is covered by a thinner layer of rock. To extract the coal, the rock above the deposit is excavated and then used to fill the gap once the coal has been removed. However, this type of mining increases the acidity the soil in the strip, causing water that runs through the area to become toxic and pollution nearby water sources (Molles, p.227-8). On the other hand, mountain top removal mining is used when the coal is located deeper in the ground. In order to extract the coal with this method, the forests on the mountain and in surrounding stream valleys are clear-cut and the top of the mountain is blown up by explosives. This process not only destroys the original wildlife habitat, but also pollutes the air and water around it (Molles, p.228). This doesn’t even address the pollution caused from burning the coal and from the coal slurry created during the disposal process (SPRS, p.196) In fact, coal contributes 820 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per gigawatt-hour, making it the least clean source of energy (Richie, Our World in Data). Coal production not only damages the environment, it is also the most deadly to produce out of all the energy sources, resulting in 24.6 deaths per terawatt-hour (Ritchie, Our World in Data).

So why keep using coal? Well, compared to other energy sources, coal is the most abundant (SRPS, 194). Because the supply is relatively high, the price of coal is low, making it an economically beneficial decision for both coal business and for consumers. Not to mention that reclaiming the destroyed land and implementing sustainable measures to repair the environment cost time and energy, making it difficult to convince money-driven coal producers to care about the ecological footprint of their mining. But if there was an economic incentive to creating more sustainable products, the coal industry would have a reason invest in sustainable practices. For example, if coal was priced based on the cost, CO2 emissions, pollution, and health conditions caused by producing the product – thus making less sustainable coal companies have to charge more for their products – customers would avoid buying from them since it would be outrageously priced. The coal industry would essentially have to compete to use the most sustainable practices to provide the lowest cost product and draw more customers, thus reducing all of the environmental and health issues from the previous paragraph.

In conclusion, a solution to the environmental issues caused from extracting non-renewable energy sources would be to increase the price of coal based on its environmental impact to discourage consumers from buying it and encourage coal producers to actively reduce pollution and environmental costs.

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