Hémery, Daniel <br/><br/>
The future of the past 

 -  2014.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 52 
<br/><br/> From the end of the eighteenth century, coal and steam-engines system became the first energetic base of the successives waves of the world industrialization. In this paper, the author investigates the factor of this prominent part and describes the phases of the coal mining era. He examines its social correlations and its heavy impact upon the Earth’s biosphere. Today, coal remains the second energy in the world but the first cause of the present climatic crisis.