We can't solve the crisis by trying our best not to disturb the status quo, things are going to get shaken up a bit.
Still very cheap. Promotes better sources of energy.
Nope, it's not a great time to be a coal-miner, but I hear Biden is trying to spend $4T on infrastructure so maybe some of those miners can buy a truck and form a road maintenance company instead!
If you're serious about getting rid of coal in the US, it needs to start with "We appreciate your and your family's work over the years, and here's a truckload of money and economic development for your region so that you can lay down that burden."
Nobody reacts favorably to doing a hard job, every day, and then listening to someone tell them they're killing the planet.
How the townsfolk there transitioned into that “doing it historically was good and necessary; but continuing to do it today would be dumb and bad” mindset might make for a good case-study. It’d certainly make for a more respectful and in-depth interview to do with them than just talking about the town’s name ;)
In case of coal, there's still _some_ demand though it's on the decline.
If carbon-heavy power generation didn't also emit particulate pollution, we probably wouldn't have a chance in hell. But thankfully, renewables and electric vehicle are also a solution to the pollution problem in many high-population areas.
But afaik, this will be the first time we're asking entire countries to forgoe huge things in their immediate best interest, in pursuit of a greater good.
The Montreal Protocol didn't touch as huge of a part of the economy, and nuclear weapons are their own ball of thistles.
Removing lead from gasoline is probably the nearest analog, although with a much lower adoption burden.
We really need to get rid of that “proud to kill myself to make my employer richer” trait.
> "We appreciate your and your family's work over the years, and here's a truckload of money and economic development for your region so that you can lay down that burden."
It’s only fair.
And there's a certain amount of pride in that struggle.
Sorry, but them's the breaks! Don't mean to sound harsh, but larger industries have died for worse reasons. What you do is what the wage earner did in the past: you suck it up and you move on because you have to provide for your family.
How many layers of industries have we invented and then rendered obsolete by subsequent industries? That number varies, in energy alone consider all the changes in distribution, extraction, etc. There has been a great deal of change in our understanding of the world since the invention of the coal industry, and it turns out coal is far more expensive than we realized.
I can see though why this seems synthetic, and why one would be motivated to challenge the assertion of fact. And it is true, that this argument is "synthetic" in the sense that it requires synthesizing many different observations spread over time and space using methods most of us aren't familiar with.
But a lot of us are swayed by the argument that using all this stored up energy in the ground has a side-effect of increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in direct proportion to that consumption, and that this in turn is unwanted because CO2 is opaque to IR, and it will increase global temperature.
There is a "false debate" about whether or not the global temperature is actually increasing. If you look at the data, or even just the satellite photos of the arctic over time, you should be convinced that there is no debate, and its just a simple fact. (And while a conspiracy that has modified those images is technically a possibility, I think there's enough on-the-ground evidence to back it up. If those Richard Attenborough narrated programs are computer generated, then they have rendering technology beyond anything in Hollywood.)
This simple assertion of fact (and its acceptance by a strong majority) has real ramifications for us in the most personal of ways, because it is a matter of the quality of life for our kids and grand-kids.
The scale of the change we must make is going to be big, and I think the coal miners are going to get the least of it. We Americans are all going to have to consider our consumption more carefully, become more frugal, more European. Our cars will shrink, and become electric. Our physical store options will become more limited, but computer mediated options more diverse, more local, more self-sustaining.
Ideally this change comes naturally as small town kids get educated in major universities in big cities, and are introduced to what I can only describe as an "Enlightenment Era Ethos", one that is rational, reasonable, skeptical, experimental (and innovative), and which is clearly convinced of the reality and importance of Global Warming. Personally, I'm convinced on first principles. Clearly energy expenditure we make, moving a 4-ton SUV 15 miles each way for one person to go to the supermarket, where each item comes wrapped in its own weight of disposable, nested wrappers that serves more of a marketing purpose than a "safe food delivery" purpose."
America can and must go through what I call the "Contraction", where life here becomes more European, communal, local and frugal in terms of the daily details of your life. There will also be the further embrace of a national safety net, and not just for old people. My hope is that cultural shifts will help major chains like Starbucks contract, too, being eclipsed by local cafes with better products, made with greater care, at similar prices, and giving more people the experience of running a business and being the boss! Heck, I would like to see the return of the local ISP business, just a rack of computers in an office park with battery backups and a person who knows how to maintain it all and secure it.
So, don't be fooled. American coal workers have an outsized influence on national politics in those states because reasons. Their jobs aren't more sacred than anyone elses and if they feel "tied to the land" or their "way of life", I tell them: I'm sorry. We will all need to change if we're to keep our ecosystem healthy by averting a possibly unfixible tragedy.
I will volunteer right now and in a legally binding way, to tutor, for free, any coal miner who wants to learn how to code for a living. Reach out via profile. First come, first serve.
It can't. Coal plants are dinosaurs that need to be shut down. Charging a carbon price is one way to make that happen faster.
This expensive part is for capturing CO2 out of ambient air, where you only get like 0.04%.
this is doubly good because it provides a great incentive for the free market to minimize the costs of CO2 sequestration and hopefully will let us hit the knee of the optimization curve asap.
We have an excellent carbon storage technology, it's called coal. And what's best, it's already there, underground, very safely, proven for millions of years! With no cost!
But we're still building new coal plants in many places. In some places, coal plants and steel factories have shut down, but it's often because industry has been offshored to a place that uses coal, or they're replaced with natural gas, only a somewhat better alternative.
So if leaving coal unused can't be made to work, then more inefficient and thus expensive methods of carbon avoidance likely can't either.
It's like working hard in the car wash for the whole day and then at the end of the day, spending all the money you just earned on having your car washed. It's a bad strategy - you would have spent a lot less time and effort if you had just washed your car yourself.
When the coal and natural gas plants have been shut down, then carbon capture might have a role.
Nice page about world coal usage: https://www.iea.org/reports/coal-information-overview