Explore the True (Lifecycle) Costs of Coal – Harvard School of Public Health

The U.S. Green Building Council recently called for its members to vote in an election of new directors to its board. Before casting my vote, I, of course, thought it a good idea to review the background of the candidates.

One is Aaron Bernstein, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Director and Program Director, Climate, Energy, and Health at Harvard University’s Center for Health and the Global Environment at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Dr. Bernstein is also a practicing physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and co-author/-editor of the award-winning book, Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. He’s an “avid bicyclist [who] peddles to and from work year round” as per his bio seen at the USGBC website.

Looking up Dr. Bernstein at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, I stumbled across this marvelous, interactive schematic illustrating the life cycle of coal.

This image may be explored interactively by visiting here.

Make time to see it.  C’mon, it’s an “Ivy League” product. Seriously, a very user-friendly representation of scholarly, important research on the costs of coal to the environment and human health.

To see the highly technical report (published in the annals of the New York Academy of Sciences) that informs this graphic, go here.