In the United States it's called "lobbying"
I personally know the director of Clean Coal Victoria from before he was mine manager at Loy Yang and worked for the Country Roads Board. He's trying to find a solution but it's too late for coal now.
There's already good solutions that have had decades of use.
Ship it (by rail) to stranded renewables, convert to coal gas and or use Fischer trope to convert to oil or propane then ship that back.
Heck there's even work on gas to biocoal, all the nasty stuff can be left behind and you get a nice clean burning substitute that can complement pure renewables in shortage periods. Rail is likely to be near coal mining areas anyway, so short branch lines or reactivation of old routes can be built at relatively low cost. The entire process could be lower than the electrical needed as distribution can continue to the end user along existing depot routes using cointainers.
Might even qualify for any renewable tax breaks and the like.
The problem is oxidation.
"genuine people" try to do all kinds of harmful regressive stuff. It does not excuse the outcomes of their actions for the world at large.
Absolutely not. But the grandparent was arguing that the push for clean coal is a result of corruption and people acting insincerely.
The parent was pointing out that not everyone with an interest in clean coal is corrupt.
Trump however takes that to it's logical extreme.
> I personally know the director of Clean Coal Victoria
You know a snake oil salesman, clean coal was never, ever going to be real whether he realizes it or not. The false promise of clean coal probably did more to hurt those communities.
You are right about the infrastructure being in place, but for wind it's probably on the wrong side of the Strzelecki range. The prevailing winds that you get in the South West where they are constructing a lot of the wind farms may still blow as strong across Wilson's Prom. but "Windy" Warrnambool is a good place for them.
And there were genuine people trying to look out for communities that relied on asbestos mining, on lead paint factories, on DDT production plants and a million other examples.
Yes, lots of people will lose their existing job when we stop burning so much coal, but that's a good thing. We need to move forward, we need to do better than we're doing now.
We can't stop making things better because we want everyone to remain employed in the same industry they are now!
In cases like these it's so blatantly obvious there is big money on the line for the existing coal industry and they have obviously paid very big money to be protected. Anywhere else in the world it would be called corruption or bribery, but in our shiny world those words are banned so new speak says we simply call it business as usual in politics.