Coal is probably a lost cause for plain pollution, but stuff like natural gas and petroleum should be burnable pretty much arbitrarily cleanly if you put in the effort. They&#x27;re already extremely clean in the context of power plants.<p>The ideal combustion cycle with a hydrocarbon produces pure carbon dioxide and water. You&#x27;ll never get all the way there, but you can approach it pretty closely. A world concerned only with pollution would likely converge on a <i>lot</i> of natural gas power plants and clean-burning oil-powered cars. A world concerned with climate change would converge on nuclear, solar, wind, and such.<p>Don&#x27;t underestimate people&#x27;s ability to deny the effects of pollution, too. Go look at the comments in the recent thread about Beijing&#x27;s smog alert. There are a ton of people in there calling into doubt the health effects of chronic high-concentration particulate pollution, even from people who have experienced it first-hand, and this is the sort of stuff that makes your eyes and nose burn with a few minutes&#x27; exposure.<p>Lots of pollution is silent and long-term, too. Smog is very visible, but how about long-term contamination of groundwater or the oceans?<p>All in all, I just don&#x27;t see much difference in membership in the set of climate change deniers and the set of people who think pollution controls are a bad idea.