The global coal sector can be likened to Austrian physicist Edwin Schrödinger’s cat, or rather, his famous experiment pertaining to quantum superposition. The scenario imagines a situation where a cat is enclosed in a box with a deadly poison. The poison would be released if some radioactive atoms decayed. While its possible to calculate the odds that the material has decayed, it cannot be determined, definitively when that would happen. There is also no way to peer inside the box and, therefore, no way of knowing whether the cat is alive or dead.
