THE GOVERNMENT in the United Kingdom recently shut the country's last deep coal mine, which has been hailed as progress in the move toward clean energy. However, government orders will not help optimize China's energy structure. Only when we have more convenient and more efficient energy sources will the old high-polluting ones be given up, said Jing Chengzi, chief editor of Luogic Show, a domestic online knowledge community, in a column for Beijing News:

When coal was first massively used centuries ago, it was called "black gold" and it well deserved that name. It was a clean energy source in the 1700s and 1800s because it produced less smoke than wood, which was widely used before that time.

It was coal that propelled the Industrial Revolution and helped drive Britain's global power. In a way, it even helped protect the environment because people no longer cut down forests for wood. Now the UK has given it up because it has better, cleaner energy sources.