These current-day issues and other considerations like them appear, at least to my layman's eye, to be solvable problems.

Now, whether or not they are morally/economically feasible, trivial vs. non-trivial to introduce solutions for, and if they align with both the users' and the companies' producing the units needs are the major challenges.

I admittedly haven't read the article yet, but it's surprising to me that black lung / industrial air quality isn't something that OSHA (or similar) is tasked with ensuring ample worker protections for.

...

>And because there's no coal, it is considered development mining or construction. So sampling the air for toxic dust is not required, even though it is the most dangerous dust. Former MSHA officials told us some inspectors did it, but most did not.

Hopefully the lawsuits cost them. However the folks that make these decisions never see the consequences; they've taken their bonuses and gone by now. Furthermore the mine doesn't pay for medicare. We all do.

It's worse than that. There might not be a company left when these guys start needing health care in a big way. (Or the mine's environmental impact is starting to be felt, or whatever)

That's normal: a mine can be structured as a dividend paying company (with one big asset) that gradually becomes less and less valuable until it's worthless at the end. If the company goes bankrupt at that point, no big deal, it's already paid what it was meant to pay for its investors. And yes, management.

Exactly. Worst case they can file for bankruptcy and blame evil environmentalists.

I can't think of a better system.

So a lawsuit becomes simply an expected cost of doing business, like how some software companies treat data leaks.

Apply this through the OSHA lense, and voila.

There was a hilarious quote from a while back where a politician referred to train loads of "cleaned coal" heading out of Montana which created a misunderstanding about what clean coal technologies are trying to do. There is no "cleaned coal".

(Aside, I believe calling those technologies "clean coal" is quite hyperbolic, but that is a separate issue)

The cleaner coal is called Anthracite [0]. The dirtier coal is Lignite [1]. Lignite is usually cleaned, by heating it up to drive out the water so it burns better (and weighs less during shipping.)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthracite [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lignite

This was a boondoggle near my hometown: sttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healy_Clean_Coal_Project

Sheetrock/gypsum board is another byproduct: https://www.buildinggreen.com/primer/synthetic-gypsum

There was a wave of flue gas gypsum emitting acidic gasses around 2009, eating through copper plumbing and wiring. This was in Florida.

CO2 still has to go somewhere. Carbonation, industrial gasses, into the ground, or into the air.

I'm skeptical of clean or green in any product name. It's more about marketing.

sounds like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall rather than clean coal

In this case, scrubbing the flue gasses and recycling the coal ash resulted in toxic drywall. This isn't to say all drywall is toxic but it illustrates one illusion of something being clean or green.

Necessarily = chemically and thermodynamically

[0]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307238776/ref=oh_aui_sear...