The Current (As in the Last 10 year) Global Energy Story?

Nobody's gonna want to hear this, but it's coal. According to energy experts, Robert Bryce and Vaclav Smil, global coal consumption over the past 10 years has outstripped that of oil, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables COMBINED. And the reason for this is utterly elementary. a) Coal is cheap and b) the importance of affordable electricity towards both modernity and prosperity is unimpeachable. And, besides, who in the hell are we to tell these poor people that they can't take the same path to prosperity that we did? I'm certainly not going to attempt it........................................................................................Oh, and if you think that I'm the only person who thinks like this, try again/exhibit A - "So getting the resources to exploit your coal as opposed to being dependent upon imported energy is a choice for you to make, but it is certainly a choice that your neighbors have made. And that's something that should attract foreign investment and should attract capital investment within your own country. And we don't know how we're going to proceed on the climate change issue. We're working hard to come to some framework before Copenhagen, but coal will be, for the foreseeable future, part of the energy mix. And if you have these kinds of reserves, you should seek the best and cleanest technology for their extraction and their use going forward." Hillary Clinton, excerpted from a business roundtable in Pakistan, 2009.