Coal is the filthiest fossil fuel and is cheap only because its dirtiness isn't included in the bill.

ECONOMIST: What is good news for miners is bad news for the environment

Yet, at the moment, governments have got things exactly backwards: they subsidise the filthiest fuel and put roadblocks in the way of the cleanest.

ECONOMIST: Burning issue

"The S.S. Badger, the filthiest ship on the Great Lakes, has been given two more years to dump hundreds of tons of dangerous coal ash into Lake Michigan, " Durbin said in a statement.

NPR: Deal Requires Ferry To Stop Ash Dumping In 2 Years

Oliver Twist also highlights the rank poverty of the inner cities - particularly when the plot moves to Jacob's Island, " the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London " where the houses were "so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor".

BBC: News Magazine