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Environmentalists Propose $50 Billion Buyout of Coal Industry - To Shut It Down
cartechboy writes "What's $50 billion among friends, right? At least Felix Kramer and Gil Friend are thinking big, so there is that. The pair have published an somewhat audacious proposal to spend $50 billion dollars to buy up and then shut down every single private and public coal company operating in the United States. The scientific benefits: eliminating acid rain, airborne emissions, etc). The shutdown proposal includes the costs of retraining for the approximately 87,000 coal-industry workers who would lose their jobs over the proposed 10-year phaseout of coal. Since Kramer and Friend don't have $50 billion, they suggest the concept could be funded as a public service and if governments can't do it maybe some rich guys can — and the names Gates, Buffett and Bloomberg come up. Any takers?"
Margaret Thatcher may have been a truly horrific Prime Minister, but she wrote the book on how to shut down a mining industry.
Smear them in the press. Sequestrate the assets of the unions. Send in a few thousand thugs to beat them up and secretly burn down a few cottages while blaming Welsh nationalists.
It worked a treat.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
For one, more plants would just spring up. Even if part of the buyout was "you may never go into coal again," someone else may. The economic structure of energy is why coal is still king, and buying out the current players won't change that.
For two, the cost of shutting that industry down does not cover the cost of starting new energy industries to replace it. Or were we just going to go without 37% of our electricity?
For three, coal works efficiently and predictably at far smaller scale than most energy technologies. Many of the locations coal services today cannot be practically services by other generation methods.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
This would never fly. The last 10% of the coal mines would just be laughing their way to the bank with this unexpected windfall.
It's the main reason we mine coal, it's cheap energy. Without it energy prices would skyrocket.
Just google U.N. Agenda 21. It is a blatant attempt by the liberal left to install a global socialistic government and destroy the freedom's our country has fought so hard to protect. It must be stopped.
imagine their sad faces when they realize that's what charges their electric cars.
It's only a model.
This plan doesn't fund replacing the power from those plants with anything, just some hand waving about "renewable energy" being expanded in parallel. Cheap energy matters. The cost of everything we buy, everything we use, comes down to labor and energy costs. If you make energy more expensive everyone pays, and pays in a "regressive" way like a sales tax.
It might still makes sense, maybe, but it will take more than hand waving.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
another 85,000 out of work and retraining does not mean shit when they have no paycheck anymore and no new jobs to replace what was lost.
The U.S. is just one country. Many other countries (China, for instance) are still using coal, and I think will more or less say the same thing: That's nice. We'll keep using coal. Want to be real heroes of the environment? Raise enough money to buy out the coal industry all over the world.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Cost of solar panels are below $1 a Watt making them an ideal replacement of Coal.
Think of how many panels could be purchased with this money.
The coal industry would shrink to almost nothing.
To me $50 billion does not seem a reasonable figure, when you factor in something else has to be built to provide the energy the plants are currently reliably producing.
That something would take a long time to build, if in fact it could be built at all (as many locations now want nothing to do with new power plants). Any viable replacement would not meet any definition they had of being "green", unless they are OK with nuclear power which seems unlikely (and again, how many replacement nuclear plants will be built for just $50 billion)?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What happens to all the people who live and work in mining towns? Murder the coal mines and what have you done to all the families and small businesses that, directly and indirectly, depend on them? This is a headline straight out of Atlas Shrugged... has the whole world gone bonkers?
Let me know when solar power or wind power can heat the homes of the elderly and the single mom trying ot make ends meet in the midwest.
You have $50 billion to spend on green energy. Make your choice:
1) Give the $50 billion to coal executives and shareholders who will then use that money to create new coal companies and open new mines, since you have done nothing to eliminate with the demand.
2) Build $50 billion worth of green energy to put the coal companies out of business for good.
The entire article is illogical. You can't just eliminate the laws of supply and demand.
No mention either of contractual obligations to municipalities or business like large manufacturing plants, etc. Lawyers are salivating over this idea.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I assume the proposal just assume coal industry to produce electricity, but there is more than that, The iron industry and steelmaking industry also uses coal.
As we all know, when you try to buy up all of something, the price doesn't change and it all goes away.
Because they make US look like amateurs.
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
Where's the damn kickstarter?
As the supply of cheap power is decreased the value of the remaining generation will increase. The value of a power plant if the present value of future profits. Remove coal from the supply and power prices go up. That makes the remaining coal plants worth much more.
25 billion might get you the first half. 50 billion will never get it all.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's a valuable energy source. What's to stop anyone (eve the current coal company people from founding a "competing" "coal" company that actually digs coal and sells it?
According to the US Energy Administration...
In 2012, the United States generated about 4,054 billion kilowatthours of electricity. About 68% of the electricity generated was from fossil fuel (coal, natural gas, and petroleum), with 37% attributed from coal.
Energy sources and percent share of total electricity generation in 2012 were:
Coal 37%
Natural Gas 30%
Nuclear 19%
Hydropower 7%
Other Renewable 5%
Biomass 1.42%
Geothermal 0.41%
Solar 0.11%
Wind 3.46%
Petroleum 1%
Other Gases 1%
I'd imagine insurance agencies would be interested in investing in this, since their bottom line is directly linked to the payouts caused by weather events that will become more frequent as climate changes. They also have access to plenty of money, and (being full of actuaries) are able to see beyond politics and act in their objective best interest, as defined by risk-benefit and ROI calculations.
Ahh, yes! That low, low, price doesn't include the price of building renewable-power plants to replace those coal fired ones that are to be shutdown, nor does it even include any budget for sending out lots of blankets to prevent millions from freezing to death during the next cold spell. Nope, that part is entirely left down to others, and specifically to the government and thus taxpayers money. So, yeah, $50b to buy and shutdown the plants, and then what, maybe $500b of pork on a good day to replace them with renewables? Sure, sounds like a good deal to me...
I think I'll just chalk this up as another ill thought out scheme that'll never work.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
"When I grow up, I want to cure world hunger!" The coal will still exist, people will still find coal, people will still want coal, etc., etc.
In addition you have to replace a whole bunch of brand new highly efficient and scrubbed power stations, and totally shut down steel production.
Metallurgic coal (coke) is essential for steel production. That pushes steel production to other countries, causing a world wide shortage, and we end up paying more and they end up polluting more.
Coal gasification projects, current and planned, would all be wiped out exactly when they are needed.
You can't simply look at the market cap of coal industry companies on Yahoo and sum them all up.
Like most plans, this is a simplistic and simple minded approach. It would never work
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Because if this ever started to get traction, the price of those coal mining companies would start to go up, just like virtually every other company that gets targeted by a hostile takeover. Even if they get enough to cover that, the boards of these companies could conceivably use a poison pill and issue discount options to everyone else to dilute the bidder's interest.
You know that old joke ... Will the last one out turn off the lights.
How do these bozos plan to power the lives 300+ million Americans who like to read at night, watch TV and have electric appliances do their laundry and wash their dishes.
And don't just say, "solar" or "wind" without including the cost (in $Gazillions) and time (in decades) to build out an entirely new infrastructure while inventing some way to store power for calm nights.
Nuclear? Great. Better start changing regulations and lining up money. Lots and lots of money.
Which would encourage us to find NEW coal supplies anywhere.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I bet China would pay many more times than $50 billion, to acquire the tens of billions of tons of coal reserves in the United States. Coal is still not priced as much as it could be worth. I don't think super billionares would be able to afford it, and stop the masses when coal becomes expensive....
The whole "retrain" workers gets me.
Retrain them for what?
Let's assume that all of those workers have the talent to be retrained in any field. What would that be?
Are the billionaires also going to pay those folks to move to areas of the country that have other industries besides coal? Would the billionaires start other industries in coal country to absorb the workers?
Retraining is just a fantasy for policy makers. Folks get retrained and find that they still can't get a job. Part of the reason is that the labor market is still really tight and employers are not willing to hire entry level people because they don't have to. There are plenty of experienced people looking.
Anyway this "article" is nothing but a "what if" by the author; so it's not to be taken seriously.-+
The goal, to lower coal usage is reasonable. Why not just increase the tax on coal? As soon as you start buying companies and land to "stop" coal production you massivly increase the value of the remaining companies and land that can produce coal. So you will just shift production from current land, to other land that is probably less efficient for coal production. Where as a tax on the product will lower the value of coal producion
Then the country falls apart because so much electricity comes from coal. Without a replacement it there would be vast blackout crippling large portions of the country. Let's get on it!
I find being offended by me offensive.
This would be perfect for kickstarter really...
so since the squillionnaire coal owners claim to be market-based fans, we can attain the same attrition by sticking to our guns in enforcing the upcoming regulations on cutting back emissions. the cost moves to the users, which will probably find natural gas cheaper anyway.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Elon Musk on this list? Oh wait, he relies on coal to charge up his Teslas... Ummm, oops. What's that sound? It's the collective popping sound as thousands of geeks take Musk's cock out of their mouths....
Felix: Gil I'm afraid I've fallen and injured myself. Can you call 911?
Gil: Of course. I'll just use my cell phone. Oh, wait. That's right. Without coal, the cell towers don't have power.
Felix: We'll take my Telsa then. Can you drive it?
Gil: Of course. Oh dear. The batteries are dead. And without coal there's no power to charge it.
Felix: Hmmm...I'm not feeling well. Can we try your solar powered car?
Gil: Sorry, too cloudy, it won't even start.
Felix: Smoke signals?
Gil: I'll just carry you to the hospital.
Felix: I guess that will have to do.
Gil: Of course, once we get there the hospital won't have power because there's no coal.
Felix: I'm beginning to re-think my life choices...
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
They should try Kickstarter!
What are you going to do with the ~37% loss in energy production?
This would take decades to phase out and far more than 50 billion dollars.
Click bait
And there is no way they are going to shutdown their production and usage of coal. This plan would essentially put them in the driver's seat of the world economy.
So. They'll use that money to nail the coffin shut on any mining community. Not that it isn't bad there already. What difference will one more unemployed Oxy-addicted miner make in towns already filled with them?
No worry for them. Obamacare will take care of it. Let's assume they had the money and *right now* they could just do it. In theory the clear air helps us, but that's literally a diffuse effect that's hard to measure. The local economic impacts are much more tangible.
Unless their plan also involves a way to shore up the individual lives and tax bases of the communities, it's really just carpet-bagging. I mean, wow, the land-spec alone is something to consider:
1. Depress community.
2. Scoop up land at bargain-basement prices
3. Develop "eco tourism", replace union mining jobs with minumum-wage service jobs.
4. Profit!
I have an uncle that is an ex-GE now consulting engineer in the coal power plant industry.
Many power plants are dual fuel: coal or NG. They run whatever is cheaper. And the thing is, at least with modern equipment coal burns as clean as Natural Gas. It even scrubs the metals out of the emissions: no mercury being emitted - or at least 99% of it.
Coal gets a bad rap because of its history and China - they're using 19th Century technology.
You know, General Electric is doing some great things with fossil fuels AND "Green" energy. It royally pisses me off when I hear "Green" energy (solar, wind, geothermal, hydro) labeled as "Liberal" when in fact it's the MOST capitalistic industry out there.
If anyone calls "Green" energy a "liberal" cause, they are just expressing their ignorance.
Let's solve the acid rain problem by shutting down the worlds cleanest coal plants.
I think the coal industry buying out the environmentalist industry would seem to be more realistic. Plus, what they propose isn't realistic anyway, seems more like childish playground behavior. A more reasonable solution is the give the coal industry, and similar ones, the proper technology (robotics, instrumentation, SI units, etc) so they can buy these technologies cheap and make a profit in their business model (or similar) while still being more "evironmentally-friendly." Coal provides several uses so much that it won't be weeded out anytime soon.
Finding jobs with Health Care for the workers who may be out of work / in retraining / working at mcd's that does not really offer it.
The 1872 GMA law, signed by Ulysses S. Grant to hasten western development during the Apache Indian Wars, gives mining companies 1) right to lease rather than buy the land, at about $5 per acre, 2) no responsibility for remediation and pollution cost, and 3) no obligation to pay taxpayers any royalty on what's mined from the Federal Land. After 137 Years, it was nearly (finally!) updated in 2009, but candidate Barack Obama cut a deal with Nevada Senator (D) Harry Reid.
As for coal, according to Bureau of Land Management "BLM has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: 1) a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof, 2) royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues." News Flash: The total fees collected do not even cover the costs of staff at the Interior Department or BLM!
Most of the mining done on the federal lands is hard rock mining (copper, gold, silver, etc.) but that is also the highest source or carbon and toxics (47% of all toxics released by all USA industry). It bankrupted Superfund (14 of the 15 largest sites are metal mining on federal land). The mere suggestion in 2009 that the GMA might be reformed caused stock in recycling companies to go up, and commodity hedge funds to go up.
Gently reply
What about the rail unions who may stop this who don't want to lose the work.
Quite frankly, you're wasting your time.
Most of the owners of coal stocks intend to hold it.
You'd be better off investing in more efficient coal-burning plants that cause less waste and less pollution, including GHG emissions, from the same unit of coal.
You're also missing that a lot of the country is national and state parks and federal lands (like military) which are forced to lease lands with coal at insanely low rates for mining.
Fix those things. Your money will go farther.
(personally, my carbon impact is about 1/10th of most Americans, so Do More, Whine Less)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Those coal execs would suddenly come into money......I'm sure they'd have no problem putting it into their next venture.... Oh look at that, there's huge energy demand all of a sudden.
The Federal Reserve spends 85 billion a **MONTH** on quantitative easing. Yet 50 billion will buy out the entire coal industry of the United States? Something is wrong there.
Using $50 billion dollars in this manner....nobody in their right mind would waste that much capital. I don't care how many Tie-dyed T-shirts and Birkenstocks you have, dumping $50 BILLION dollars into a literal pit is gonna hurt!
Except raise the prices of electricity. The Coal plants will just import form overseas and the proce to consumers will be higher as a result. Not that raising the price won't change the economics, but it won't kill the industry like they seem to assume here. It would be better to pour their money into some R&D to find a better substitute with a lower cost green alternative. After all $50 Billion with a 'B' would certainly help find better technology if in the right hands.
You have $50 billion to spend on green energy. Make your choice:
1) Give the $50 billion to coal executives and shareholders who will then use that money to create new coal companies and open new mines, since you have done nothing to eliminate with the demand.
2) Build $50 billion worth of green energy to put the coal companies out of business for good.
The entire article is illogical. You can't just eliminate the laws of supply and demand.
For #1, the 50 billion would buy the properties. They couldn't start mining again unless they find another deposit somewhere.
But coal is such a low margin business, it doesn't make sense to enter it. All of the current producers have been around for a LONG time.
Some of the complaints is in how much it costs to scrub out all of the soot, CO2, etc, and how the costs from going to 80% to 90% clean is so much more expensive than cleaning the first 50%.
How about just fund to put the cheap technology to get at least some level of scrubbing in China or whoever else is using coal?
(yes, I know ... there are two major flaws in this argument; (1) the particles that aren't caught may be the ones that have more significant health effects; (2) if coal is then seen as 'clean', when only less bad relative to unscrubbed coal (and not other alternative energy sources), we reduce the arguments for why people should cut off coal all together ... but it still seems more cost effective than just thinking you'll buy out all of the production)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
As always, these plans call on **other people's** money to do what their little hearts desire. And note, one suggestion was government funding. You know, taking money from people who are against their idea to fund it. As always.
I guess we'll be building a lot more nuclear power plants, then?
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
This plan would essentially put them in the driver's seat of the world economy.
You say that like it's a bad thing. Their economy seems to have been doing rather well for some time now, especially compared against ours.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Vastly increased aluminum costs?
I'm REALLY curious as to what they expect to replace the coal mining business with in the middle of rural West Virginia. Even assuming you could retrain all those workers, that simply leaves an entire army of now skilled workers sitting in towns that have had their economy completely decimated by the elimination of coal. One doesn't simply regenerate a brand new, magic economy there from scratch. Even something as basic as building a new factory, say a solar panel factory, would require not just the cost of building the factory, but the infrastructure to support said factory (roads, water, power, rail links, etc.), and $50B is not going to cover the cost of doing that for 87,000 workers.
According to Wikipedia:
"The mining law applies to some mineral products, but not others, and the list has changed over time. Since 1920, the list of locatable minerals does not include petroleum, coal, phosphate, sodium, and potassium. Rights to explore for and extract these are leased through competitive bidding." (Emphasis mine)
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Unless you then make it illegal to start again, someone will just move in to fill the demand.
If this starts getting any traction, I need to start buying coal company stocks. You and some others get to feel good. I get rich. Win-win.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
There are fields, OakDragon, endless fields where hipsters are no longer born, they are grown.
I fully support making this change in a way that makes everyone better off. I don't think the people running coal power plants are necessarily evil or deserve to lose their livelihood, but we find ourselves in a position where coal is just not a good thing to be doing.
If you really wanted to kill coal power generation using government intervention, then the more logical thing to do would be to put in place a tax that will only impact coal power stations, and use the money brought in from that tax to subsidize green power stations built to replace the coal ones. If the tax starts low but increases every year, then the transition could be gradual, but coal might still be eliminated on a reasonable time scale.
Let's say their plan goes perfect and they get public money. Then the price of electricity goes up and the public has to pay even more. Yeah that makes sense.
Or at least "Carbon Tax". C'mon, naive people. China burns more coal than the US and they're increasing consumption.
I agree pretty much wholeheartedly that the coal companies need to die. But a 50-billion dollar payoff to an industry that is proud to poison the skies, destroy the landscape, and ruin the drinking water? Give free money to the people who want the USâ(TM)s environment to become more like Chinaâ(TM)s? Oh, HELL no. Put them out of business by any other means necessary. But letâ(TM)s not give those bastards a single red cent. Seriously. Screw those guys.
A better idea would be to impose (and enforce) strict carbon and particulate caps, deny permits for strip, open-pit, and mountaintop-removal mining, and crippling penalties for release of mining and processing chemical waste into the water supply. And you know what? If the coal companies are willing to reform themselves to operate within those constraint as good corporate citizens, fine. I will reform my opinion of them if and when they do. But otherwise? Screw âem.
And if weâ(TM)re going to spend 50-billion dollars on getting the US off of coal, letâ(TM)s do it the right way and use it to fund R&D on alternate, cleaner, energy sources: efficient photovoltaics, energy-positive fusion, thorium or fast-breeder fission, and so on.
Imagine all the people...
It's not whether the energy source is "green" or not that makes it a "liberal" cause. It's the initiation of physical force that makes it a "liberal" cause.
While the coal and utility industries lobby Congress, GE, UTC and a few other companies that make pollution control and cleaner energy systems are lobbying the other way.
Big Corps vs Big Corps.
And I'd like to point out that without Federal "force", companies would be doing whatever they want. If you look at US economic history, you will read about things like the Cuyahoga River catching on fire.
The Federal Government is all we have to protect the commons and curtail the "tragedy of the commons".
Whine about the EPA, but if it weren't for them, you'd be breathing mercury, dust, and god knows what else because profits make people Evil.
The buyouts are pointless, as the coal industry is going extinct all on it's own. With the advent of hydraulic fracturing, the price per BTU for coal is almost twice cost per BTU for natural gas. Not suprisingly, US coal consumption has been going down since 2008. There's little reason to buyout coal plants and mines that are going to go bankrupt anyways because they can't compete with natural gas.
All we really need to do is eliminate the government subsidies to the coal industry that are slowing down this process.
So does this mean we are going to kill of the integrated steel mills as well? Coal is necessary for the steel making process.
I wonder how the United Mine Workers and the United Steel Workers would feel about this. Perhaps they could all get jobs in the fast food industry?
#WeDontNeedNoStinkingManufacturing
...you can smell the pot fumes wafting up from the proposal...
Sure, I come up with all sorts of great ways for other people to spend their money .... generally they aren't interested. Either.
Great...then we can all sit around freezing in the dark and congratulate ourselves on what great progressives we are. Meanwhile, Russia, China, Mexico and the rest will continue to spew more pollution into the air than 1000 Americas.
The source of the parent quote above is the Bureau of Land Management federal website. Perhaps whoever authored your wikipedia article is making a distinction about the "Mineral Leasing Act of 1920" which is derivative of the GMA. Or perhaps Jack Abramoff's mignons have been editing your wiki. But again, this is from BLM.gov
http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/coal_and_non-energy.html "BLM has responsibility for coal leasing on approximately 570 million acres where the coal mineral estate is owned by the Federal Government. The surface estate of these lands could be controlled by BLM, the United States Forest Service, private land owners, state land owners, or other Federal agencies. BLM receives revenues on coal leasing at three points: 1) a bonus paid at the time BLM issues the lease an annual rental payment of $3.00 per acre or fraction thereof, 2) royalties paid on the value of the coal after it has been mined. The Department of the Interior and the state where the coal was mined share the revenues."
Again, the total fees collected (GMA 1872 and MLA 1920 combined) do not even cover the costs of staff at the Interior Department or BLM!
Gently reply
Ignoring the plethora of other problems this would face, wouldn't this be shut down by the anti-trust/monopoly laws?
I work in tech support, trust me when I say it's not just liberals who are dumb as bricks. It's all persuasions and class levels. I am constantly amazed that the world continues to work at all with the absolute sheer amount of brain dead, short sighted thoughts I see/hear on a regular basis. As a liberal this idea is most definitely not thought out, but is it really any worse than trying to stimulate the economy with tax breaks for those well off(I'm not saying tax breaks are bad, just the current use of them in the USA) and trickle down economics when 30+ years worth of data shows it doesn't work?
Indeed, I don't claim to be knowledgeable about this subject. I know next to nothing about mining.
However, reading the Wikipedia page on GMA-1872 leaves me with one burning question... Is it possible for me to lease land from the federal government for $5/acre?
At the top of the entry, I see "All citizens of the United States of America 18 years or older have the right under the 1872 mining law to locate a lode (hard rock) or placer (gravel) mining claim on federal lands open to mineral entry". Now, perhaps you have more insight into this than I do... presumably, any piece of federal land west of the Great Plains will contain at least a single atom of platinum, gold, silver, copper, lead, zinc, uranium or tungsten. Would I be eligible to stake a claim and get myself an acre for $5, and retain that claim for as long as I perform "at least $100 worth of labor" every year? Presumably, 14 hours of digging around with a spade would be sufficient (assuming labor is valued at the federal minimum wage)?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Or, you know, just make the stations handle waste products better and recycle them.
The initial install is the costly part, but the creation of useful by-products would pay for it over the years.
All of the things that come out of those plants have a very useful use somewhere else, from power to farming, and most can be captured fairly easily without too much maintenance requirements. Some are much harder, though.
But regardless, they all have a use, and they all have their separate prices that they could be sold at, just like any other product.
There is NO need to get rid of coal. Coal is very useful. What there is a need of is to recycle it since it is valuable and has very valuable by-products of its use. That $50 billion would be better spend improving the infrastructure and adding said recycling in to each of the plants. And there'd be some left over so they can sniff more koolaid. Why they are sniffing koolaid is beyond me. Environmentalists are weird. Stop sniffing liquids damn it!
Not until you can show me, and the millions of others who burn coal for heat how to keep our homes at 75 degrees inside when its 20 below outside for around $30 a month.
This is what economists call a Coasian Solution to a problem of externalities. Coase's Theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are sufficiently low transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property.
Environmentalists could purpose to kill themselves for the sake of environment. less humans => less need for electrics and coal => less pollution. No need to raise billions of dollars which they can never be able to do, and no need to trouble others.
Suicide now to save the world!
Too bad they don't also have a concrete plan to match the decrease in coal-generated power with something more environmentally friendly.
From the article:
If at the same time the US accelerates expansion of renewable energy sources and transmission facilities, this could be accomplished with no interruption to electricity supplies, adding only about a penny or two to each kilowatt-hour on electricity bills.
It's be more useful to spend 50 billion developing and installing cost-effective renewable energy sources that are cheaper than coal. Then coal would go away on its own via capitalistic drivers.
Why not just throw out $1? It seems just as likely to buy up an entire critical industry... $50BN isn't going to come anywhere near close enough.
... Now what? Because as the Germans figured out when they shut down their nuclear plants and went to wind power, they have to build a coal power plant for every wind farm as a back up power supply.
Why? Renewable power is not reliable. It is also sometimes seasonal giving more power at one time of year and much less at others. Which means you need something else to handle the power needs in lean times.
Coal, for all its flaws is reliable. If you have coal stockpiles you have power.... winter, summer, spring... you have power.
You can also store coal very cheaply in huge quantities. Compare the energy storage capacity of a pile of coal with any battery, capacitor, flywheel, whatever you can imagine and obviously the coal will have a higher energy density and lower cost.
Okay, so it has the CO2 and global warming and all that hilarious stuff. But the fact is that the coal is reliable and we need reliable power to sustain modern infrastructure.
So, environmentalists... if you REALLY want to change the world... you need to come up with ACTUAL replacements for the things you want to remove from our system. Not half assed super expensive quasi broken replacements that literally kill people through failure. Because if you impliment that, people will get mad and they'll reverse their support and instead support anyone that can turn the lights back on. Which means that coal power plant you just shut down... will fire right back up rendering your whole campaign a total and complete failure.
So again... here are your choices.
1. Come up with actual replacements to fossil fuels that are competitively priced without subsidization or the same subsidization as fossil fuels enjoy. People always bring up that fossil fuels get subsidies as well... fine... same subsidies... no more. And it has to be as reliable as fossil fuels. People need to be able to count on it come hell or high water.
2. Utterly fail wasting the time, money, and public respect of everyone that supports you.
Those are your two choices.
I appreciate option one is difficult. That is however the task. Half assing it is not acceptable if you presume to shut down coal and nuclear plants.
What I personally prefer as a method to reduce fossil fuel use is a mixture of things that reduce our dependence on coal and nuclear power but still retains them to take whatever load we can't meet.
So for example, put solar panels on your roof. Put up a wind turbine. Install some Syngas/biofuel generators that turn farm waste/leaf litter/etc into power/fuel/compost. Make everything more efficient so it uses less power.
Do all of that and the number of big nuclear and coal power plants will be reduced. We just won't need as many of them. BUT if something happens... lets say its a really dark month with a lot of cloud cover, its really cold, maybe the wind isn't blowing, etc... Don't you want the power to flow to your house regardless?
Of course.
So please don't undermine the supporting infrastructure of the power grid. Coal and nuclear have their place. And that place is valid until people are generating enough of their own power and their technology is efficient enough not to need the coal and nuclear.
Please environmentalists... don't destroy yourselves by going off half cocked.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What do you think a coal mine owner would do with said dollars and all that equipment? I've got $500mm burning a hole in my pocket, and I'm a coal miner. Move 300 acres to the left and start anew. I think I'll start up another coal mine, so they can buy out this one too. Except this time, I'll charge much, much more for it.
We are told that coal and oil are created by plants and animals dying and then being buried for a long time (heat, pressure, etc) in an entirely natural process. There are plenty of plants and animals and people living and dying all over the world all the time i.e. plenty of bio mass is dying and getting buried every year. Someday in the distant furutre it will be oil and/or coal. Since life (and death) are continally happening on Earth there's oil and coal we use today, and there's almost-oil and almost-coal (that will be ready to be used in a century) and almost-almost-oil and almost-almost-coal (that will be ready to be used in two centuries) etc. Right? A "continuum" of carbon-based life being converted to fossil fuels must surely exist. If not, then the process is not continual and naturally-occurring and then our beliefs of where the stuff we're currently using comes from is deeply flawed.
If fossil fuels = (deadstuff + time +heat +pressure) then they are renewable... and unlike many other forms of so-called renewables they are proven to form on their own with no human involvement required, surely the optimal form of renewables.
One of the largest coal miners in the US (e.g. Arch Coal) has annual revenues of just under $5B and they claim to supply 17% of the US' domestic energy supply. Their Black Thunder mine produces around 115 Mt per year.
To put that into context, the US mines approximately 1 Gt of coal per year. At around 66 USD/t, you couldn't even buy all the coal the US produces in one year, let alone the companies that produce it for $50 billion!
The costs of purchasing a mine, then shutting it down in a socially and environmentally sustainable manner, are astronomical. The cost to acquire a SINGLE COAL PROPERTY (not even the company that owns it) can easily hit $0.5 - $1 billion, then you have to PAY to close it down and do something with the THOUSAND people who work there. Then you have to repeat this with every single mine, and who is going to do the phase out work and what are you going to pay them with?
The life of a mine may be 50 to 100 years and a lot of the costs for "close out" are reduced to their "net present value". As an oversimplified example, if it will cost $100 to build a fence in 100 years, and you get 2.5% return on every dollar you save for the purposes of building that fence, then you need to put in just under $9 today to pay for that fence in 100 years time. Regulations vary depending on the state / province / territory, but in many cases the company will need to pay the NPV of all their closure costs up front. If you prematurely close out the mine, you better hope you have enough money to cover the lost 20, 50, or 100 years of additional investment and interest, or you may go to jail.
It would be cheaper to do a pilot project in Centrailia, PA to build a power plant to generate steam from the coal already burning underground.
Just curious, if you improved the insulation on your house, how much would that save you, potentially? Did you try that and how well did it work?
I think I invested a couple thousand on insulation for my roof and it cut my winter heating and summer cooling by 30% and the whole house just *feels* more comfortable. I think I made the investment back in two years--heating done with natural gas, cooling done with electricity.
--PeterM
Coal produces fully one-third of all electricity in the US, what exactly is the plan to make up for that lost generation capacity? In ten years?
Also, eliminating the US consumption of coal does nothing about the ever-increasing use of coal in China where they are bringing new coal-fired generators online at a rate of one per week...
Ken
You say that like it's a bad thing. Their economy seems to have been doing rather well for some time now, especially compared against ours.
Just because something seems to be doing well, doesn't mean it's actually doing well.
It takes around 9 billion to build a replacement Nuke for a Coal plant. Solar, yeah right -- no base load on solar! There are hundreds of coal plants. Even if you switched to natural gas it would cost around 1-2 billion apiece! 50 BILLION is enough to fund the closing of maybe 5% of the coal plants in the country without human factors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
In principle, ownership by environmental groups is a good way to preserve a resource. There have been multiple instances of environmental groups buying property they wanted to protect. One that comes to mind is Ducks Unlimited, which buys wetlands to preserve them.
But there are at least two issues with buying coal mines: (1) as they buy more mines, the value of the mines that are left goes up; (2) as the price of coal is driven up by lowered supply, mining becomes more profitable and new mines are likely to open.
So they could certainly buy the mines, but they cannot buy the coal industry.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
Get out of coal, replace it with nuclear, and eliminate all subsidies for the unsightly sprawl of the new generation of renewable trinkets.
Yes, there are good renewable power sources: concentrated, zero emissions, with a small environmental footprint per gigawatt of output. THIS is a renewable power source done right: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
50 billion dollars spent buy^H^H^Hlobbying politicians would allow you to get many laws passed imposing big carbon taxes on coal, making it uneconomical compared to alternative energy sources like natural gas.
The fact is, that if we pull all of the coal out of production, then we must get our energy elsewhere. Where will it come from? Probably burning more nat gas, and then by importing more oil to replace the nat gas that WAS slowly replacing the coal.
What is REALLY needed is NOT to kill coal outright, but to convert it to methane via GPE. At that point, we move our coal power to a MIXTURE of nat gas, new atomic, Renewables, and storage (better to handle variable demand loads).
And if we REALLY wanted to kill off CO2, then the best thing that America can do is put a tax on ALL GOODS CONSUMED (local and imported) that is based on where they and parts come from. If high CO2 / $GDP, then high tax. If low CO2/$GDP, then low tax. Simple as that. It will force all nations to participate since USA is the world's largest importers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Let's shut down coal production, then go after fracking, then shut down every single hole in the ground that delivers any kind of petrochemical, then push in every control rod in every nuclear powe$ plan% in ghe U.X., t en go *fter
NO CARRI
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Unfortunately this is just another idea that bolsters the industrialist notion that environmentalists are idiots. This plan attacks the supply side but does nothing to stem demand – the key piece of capitalism. A more likely result would be in a spike of coal prices leading to a huge new land grab and expansion of strip mining by the newly enriched (and bought out coal companies) with race to be the new coal supplying Barron. The only way to beat them is to displace the coal industry with some other industry. Pure money into a clean fuel research, the next and more efficient battery technology, super conductivity, fusion . Anything but incentivizing the current model.
First of all, this would end up costing at least twice what they say it would. Let's say the first coal plant sells for $1B. The second one says...hmmm...they got $1B...I can get $1.2B....and so on.
Secondly, the US is far from the largest coal user and polluter. Even if you could shut down every coal plant in the US you would have to repeat the process in every country in the world that uses coal (starting with China). Yeah, good luck with that.
Thirdly, they suggest having it publicly funded or letting the rich guys pay for it. Obamacare is the latest huge publicly funded project in the US. Before that, it was TARP funds for infrastructure projects. Both of them have failed to meet stated goals. Both of them went vastly over budget. Both of them were rife with abuse and cronyism. Am I the only one that sees a pattern here?
So let's get the rich guys to pay for it. Ahh...the battle cry of the Socialist. And how is that going to happen exactly? Are we, the public, going to ask them to voluntarily give up large swaths of their fortunes to fund this project? Uh huh....not gonna happen. So then what? We take the money whether they like it or not through taxation or penalties or some other such method. This has been tried time and time again. They will simply hire accountants and lawyers to find a way around it and the middle class guy - who can't afford to hire the fancy accountants and lawyers - gets stuck with the bill.
So what to do? Why not try investing some of that $50B into finding ways of making coal safer to use and less harmful to the environment?
That's all I have to say.
I guess this is what happens when all you do is think while stoned.
But, but, but, without coal, you won't have enough electricity. And if you don't have enough electricity then there will be no power for your plug-in hybrids. And if you can't plug-in your hybrids, then that will lead to a severe shortage of smug. And since smug is the sustaining life force of the Progressive Movement, eliminating coal will cause the death of the Progressive Movement.
...because how are you going to run a blast furnace without coal? That's needed even to recycle iron and steel.
So the billionaires had better pay for a world without Coal, Iron or Steel. That's going to be expensive, and probably technically impossible...
Still, that's never stopped green activists. I wouldn't have thought they would be allowed to do this much damage to the European energy infrastructure, but they have...
1. buy coal industry for 50 giga$
2. new coal companies form
3. new coal companies use eminent domain to buy your land for significantly less than 50 giga$
???
I already don't use any coal-generated electricity, thanks. Took that step a dozen or more years ago.
Somehow it has not resulted in the shutdown of any coal mines. Go figure! Something about supply and demand and cost interrelationships.
Or, to put it another way, infinitesimally reducing demand isn't really in any way equivalent to infinitesimally contributing to a blockade of supply.
They are talking about shutting down an order of magnitude more coal plants. Four nuclear reactors is not going to cut it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
TFA claims that coal causes $100-500 billion in damage per year. If that is the case, and I don't know if it is, then pass that cost on to the coal industry. Basic economics states that externalities cause a free market to be inefficient, so why aren't we internalizing the externalities?
They aren't going away. Spend the billions on making them clean(er).
You going to get on your little stationary bike and power most of world?
Novel concept, just not thinking it all the way through, I don't think.
You know, if they did targeted purchases of older, dirtier plants and got them shut down, it'd probably have a decent effect for the given investment.
There are a bunch of dirty holdout plants that aren't upgrading, it seems like they'd be easy targets.
surely it would be far better to spend 50 billion on developing and rolling out technologies that make coal irrelevant?
Solar versus nuclear: a question of scale. Further comments go into detail about resources and areas.
Read about Germany for an idea of what $50 billion will buy in terms of renewables--that is a drop in the bucket of their expenditures. Despite having been at it for more than a decade, they have little to show for it except skyrocketing electricity prices. Replacing fossil fuels with solar is an expensive fantasy.
The reason is that energy will move over to Nat Gas, or even oil. Worse, if we do this just in the us, it will do even more damage to American manufacturing than what the neo-cons did with their tax schemes.
Instead, put a tax on ALL LOCALLY CONSUMED GOODS (locally produced as well as imported) and their subparts. It would be based on the CO2/$GDP. In addition, base it on REAL values of CO2 and not guesses. Measure CO2 in and out of nations/states.
With this approach, it rewards those that have low CO2/$GDP emissions, while having those with high CO2/$GDP pay a lot more, discouraging good from there (basically, you make them pay for their CO2). Interestingly, most 3rd world nations would pay little to no taxes. That would not be true for the oil producers since many of those purposely overlook an environmental regs, esp. those ran by dictators.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
WTF?
What. The. Fuck?
Americans, that's what.
Only AMERICANS continually write "an" instead of "a". How fucking difficult can it be? "an somewhat"?
admit a conservative like Thatcher was right.
I've been a "left wing greenie" since the 70's, my 80yo parents are both life long "war baby" conservatives who grew up under Winston Chuchill, I love my elderly parents, I don't agree with everything they say but that doesn't make me hate them? I'm also old enough to clearly remember the 70's and 80's and I think you are correct, Thatcher deserves credit for pulling the UK out of a bad financial position, even though her methods polarized the political landscape. It should also be noted that "trickle down economics" has also ultimately been discredited by the recent GFC but you can hardly blame Thatcher and Reagan for the extremes of deregulation implemented by others that followed their tenure. For example, here in Oz it was the left wing treasurer and later PM (Paul Keating) who pushed for deregulating the banks.
Having said that, Thatcher, Reagan and Malcom Fraser (Australia's late 70's, conservative PM) were not even the same species as GWB, Palin, and Tony Abbot (current Oz PM). For example Thatcher was the first world leader to publically acknowledge AGW is a problem and Reagan personally sought and obtained an international cap and trade treaty on sulphur emissions that has been very successful in curbing acid rain. I suspect Reagan was taking his cues from Thatcher on the acid rain thing since she had read chemistry at Oxford before becoming involved in politics. Fraser's "radical" policy on refugees was closer to today's green party policy than it is to either of the majors who currently are so close to each other that the only meaningful debate on the subject is which third world nation should host our immigration gulags..
Hate parades Aside from the fact that ALL leaders make good and bad decisions, celebrating the death of anyone pretty much makes you a douchebag in my opinion. Headlines such as "Ding, dong, the witch is dead" were a low point even by the UK's notoriously low tabloid "standards". Far right conservatives flying an upside down flag after Obama's election were equally obscene.
Liberals hate conservatives
The real problem is human nature, ideas and long term results are simply ignored because people pigeon hole others by whatever political colour they wear on the outside. This stereotyping separates people into political "football teams" and you're not suppose to just enjoy a game of football, society expects you to be a one-eyed supporter of a particular team. GWB summed up that attitude succinctly with the infamous words addressed to the entire planet - "You're either with us or against us". That anti-human attitude, wherever it raises it's ugly head, is what I "hate" about politics.
Disclaimer: I don't claim to be anymore immune to the tribal nature of humans than anyone else on the planet, however just being aware of it's existence does make one stop and think every now and then.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Yes. You can. But most people buy stock, shares in BHP Billiton, Vale, Xstrata, Rio Tinto, Asarco.... buying rights to hundreds of thousands of acres at a time.
Gently reply
Depends on the "nuclear" you're talking about.
Light water or Graphite moderated Uranium reactors...yeah...there's a disaster like Fukushima and Chernobyl waiting to happen with that on each and every reactor of that type out there. We should probably contemplate the same fate as coal fired plants for those, so long as we consider other more viable answers...
Liquid Salt Thorium? Differing story and it's actually "green" in relative terms and economical from an energy standpoint compared to coal.
But...will the eco-idiots (which is what they should legitimately be called) sign off on that? Probably not. Mainly because it's "nuclear" and they can't discern one form over another, nor do they care to learn because it doesn't validate what they feel to be the truth there.
Just buy the coal mines and drive up the price of coal in the usa. There might be some anti-trust implications for this.
Even ignoring the economic silliness of it all, if it were possible they'd celebrate by freezing in the dark. But at least their last breath would be pristine! Fools.
Right Here. Interesting read. Yeah, yeah, causation, correlation, but still an interesting read.
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our liberal leanings are _Civilized_ standards.
Read your sig, btw. Liberty is economic security. If you lack economic security you'll do whatever the guy with money tells you to do. Sooner or later you'll get hungry enough. You'll break. Everyone does. Hunger and poverty make animals out of us all...
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British Steel, like American Steel, couldn't compete with slave labor. Heck, I shouldn't call them slaves. You _own_ a slave, so you at least try to keep it running. Chinese Workers have even less value.
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The industry execs are all worrying that their licenses and permits to mine will remain unused and the coal will lie in the ground as customers switch to cleaner and more economical fuels.
These industry execs are trying to figure out ways of cashing out now rather then suffering the slow decline. Sort of like the guy trying to sell you his house just before the city condemns it for the new freeway off-ramp. And it wouldn't surprise me if they (industry) put these so-called environmentalists up to the task of rounding up some public money to fund the golden parachutes.
Have gnu, will travel.
And now to act on this idea.
Very much so, in fact so naive that it shows no understanding that steelmaking uses coal for chemical instead of thermal means.
You can't make steel with just iron ore and an electric arc furnace. You need a source of carbon and a reducing agent.
Everything is completely worthless without alternatives. That $50 Billion would be much better served creating renewable energy plants. Then, once there are viable alternates, can the move against coal be made.
1. Create a tax on coal and coal-based power generation designed to collect the $50 billion.
2. After revenue collected, begin the buyout and shutdown program.
HOWEVER, my suspicion is --- buyout a few companies, and the rest will become more expensive.
Buy out them all, and the CITIZENS will pay the price, as energy bills skyrocket.
To address your siderant...
****TL;DR Drought. Desertification. The kind that won't stop until the remnants of humanity are only at the Arctic circle by 2100.
My parent post is precisely the kind of mindset I had until sometime last year when I researched this more in-depth. I think this is ultimately why first-world citizens are still ambivalent to climate change: we don't appreciate the potential magnitude of what's going to happen.
So the planet warms a few degrees and some cuddly animals go extinct, maybe even lose some ocean-front property, why should I care?
When I looked at the latest papers myself, I was shocked. The models and predictions have way more confidence than they used to, but scientists simply aren't framing the results at all for the public anymore. (This is understandable due to the fear of stirring up political backlash, but it means the public at large is becoming more and more desensitized to the biggest threat to our species) [Keep in mind that climate change nearly wiped us out 100,000 years ago. Did you know that we all come from roughly 100 surviving humans who holed up in a beach-front cave in South Africa?]
As the Hadley cells expand, the deserts near the equator will grow in size, and the temperate zones will constantly shift North. How much they grow depends fully on what we (and by we I mean China and India) do RIGHT NOW (and by right now, I really mean ten years ago, not ten years from now). If we (again, humanity as a whole, the US makes almost no impact from here on out **except by leading by example**) continue to exponentially grow our coal industry at full steam for the next few decades, then the areas in extreme drought (think worse than the US dust bowl) will basically cover the entire planet by 2100.
Comparing our current CO2 ppm to the dinosaur era isn't accurate enough to spell out our future (I wish it were). Never before has CO2 concentration increased this quickly in such a short period of time. The climate changed gradually over millions of years in the dinosaur era. Biodiversity can easily morph on a planet-wide scale on that time period. Here, we've done that same ppm transition in roughly a century, and with our exponential growth, we're likely to nearly *double* our current concentration in another 50 years. That concentration alone is unprecedented in our planet's entire history, let alone the impossibly short time scale that we'll achieve it in.
Once we appreciate that history has no lessons for our new unchartered territory, we look long and hard at the best simulations we've made to date, which take into account the continents' shapes and locations (which are extremely different from Pangea, I might add), and you find a very grim story: The ocean loses its ability to carbon-sink, the permafrost begins melting and emitting methane, and you have accelerated warming even without anymore added help from us. The result is a disruption of all jet-streams to the point where every year looks different from the previous. Very wet to very dry. Hot to cold. Our existing breadbaskets simply can not handle this level of volatility. Massive crop failure will become the "new normal," and the world's impoverished will be ravaged with famine. Famine is the biggest driver of civil unrest, which probably means many third world countries will simply cease to exist as they degrade into permanent chaos. Almost half of the entire world will become malnourished. This is to say nothing about how the extreme droughts will affect water scarcity, which is already considered the world's biggest risk in terms of likeliness and impact by the World Economic Forum. Water scarcity won't hit the world as hard in more developed regions, because we will burn more energy (like oil, natural gas, and coal...and yes, **eventually** solar power) to desalinate water.
That's the first whammy to humanity. As time marches on, you'll then find the steady desertifcation I mentioned above (Google 'future drought map' and just look at tho
AccountKiller
Because people being out of jobs is the really important thing when you have to decide between fucking up the planet or not fucking up the planet, yes?
Funny how /. has multiple personalities. When it comes to the MPAA and RIAA, we keep telling them that analogy with the car replacing the horse carriage and to move with the times.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As soon as the buyout plan completes, a group of investors recognize the lack of competition and open a new coal power plant. They would have a total monopoly and would effectively nullify the whole liberal plan. It is typical of liberals to only consider the first half of the plan while conveniently ignoring the market response.
Yea, that's for people with money.
I'm just looking to live in a shack for $5. An acre is plenty for me.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
We don't need to spend $50 billion to destroy the economy. Obama will do it for "free" between now and the 2016 elections.
If every man, woman & child in the United States kicked in an equal amount it would come out to ~$161 per person. Not too bad until you consider that as this plan does not appear to replace coal power with anything else but merely suggests that if government were to accelerate integration of renewables at the same time power would remain uninterrupted. Seems fairly pie in the sky without that pesky step, rolling blackouts & massive price increases would probably tank the economy.
Found the link to the article I referenced (not sure why I couldn't find it in my browser history before):
Shale Oil & Gas: Not a Revolution But a Retirement Party
(It's a rather depressing read, actually.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
"coal industry will be phased out naturally"
Hopefully, though new industries often face regulatory, financial & infrastructure hurtles that entrenched industries either overcame long ago, or were put in place by those same industries to prevent market competition. There are some pretty pointed examples of some in the current energy industry trying to prevent renewables, requiring safety cutoff gear to be purchased from the power company at massively inflated prices, moving for higher energy prices in areas with significant renewable adoption & secretly campaigning against renewable projects. There is no doubt that the market should play a big roll in which energy source we use, but we also need to make sure that the playing field is level for all energy providers and no one industry is able to suppress competition from the others for their own financial gain.
It is amazing that in all their glee the environMentalists mentioned in this story forgot about the actual customers who are using the power the coal plants are producing. In case people have missed it, a huge amount of America is powered by coal plants and would need to be put on some other type of power. We are a bit limited at this point in time if sci-fi authors are to be believed for how power is produced in the future.
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817
APK
P.S.=> Time to show everyone here reading (yet again) how you "Run, Forrest: RUN!!!" when challenged after your stupid mindless trolling, yet again... lol!
... apk
Wow, do the Environmentalists actually have fifty gigabucks? Oh... I suppose they are wanting someone else to pay for it.
I remember another proposed buyout proposal -- for slavery. Mormon leader Joseph Smith ran for U.S. president, as a platform to gain sympathy for his people, which didn't work as well as one might have hoped; he was assassinated soon after, and an extermination order was given by the governor of Missouri to kill all mormons, on sight, without trial, as public enemies, largely because they were a unified voting block against slavery.
So, in his platform, Smith said that the problem for giving up slaves was primarily economic, and so the government should buy slaves* from their "masters" at fair market value, over the course of a decade or so. Sound familiar?
The plan was ridiculed as being -- you guessed it -- too expensive.
So instead, we fought a Civil War. Taking, at least, 1.25 million lives.
And which cost an estimated $7 trillion in modern dollars. On the Union side alone (includes soldiers' pensions).
I can't find figures for the Confederacy, which may be because the costs were incalculable.
Is there a lesson to be learned here? What will the costs of inaction be for global climate change? I am quite certain they will make the figures for the Civil War pale in comparison.
(* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_people_and_early_Mormonism#Nauvoo_era_prior_to_Smith.27s_death_.281838_to_1844.29)
You trolling piece of shit http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4885825&cid=46474817
APK
P.S.=> How many times do I have to show everyone you're a worthless piece of crap troll? This, is just yet another... apk
Couldn't we just use that $50B to improve efficiency across the US? Upgrade plants and transmission lines. Replace older appliances like fridges, air conditioners, water heaters. Change out windows and doors while adding insulation. I feel like that would be just as helpful and probably cost less than buying all the coal.
Let's see... they've been against nuclear from day one...
they're now doing everything they can to shut down coal
the same crowd is now up in arms over "fracking"
we have to "save" all of our forests, so enough wood stoves to go around is right out
Just what -should- we do, move back into caves? I really want to know what the end-game is intended to be.
(makes you wonder if the VHEM people might be behind all of this)
It might not be as unreasonable as it seems, for the last few years power usage has been dropping nationally. Power companies have even started campaigning for increased electric prices because of decreased electric usage revenue. This of course after arguing for decades for higher prices because people were using "too much" electricity for them to handle. I doubt that our national power usage could ever drop by 37% but it could probably be dropped by around 15% probably isn't out of the question, even higher if use of energy efficient appliances/lighting could be expanded. Of course this is only useful as a thought experiment, buying up coal companies and shutting them down while expecting other sources to magically take up the slack is laughable.
The only real way to get rid of coal is coming up with a cheaper replacement.
You might even get away with banning coal in a few developed countries, but if you care about climate change, this will solve nothing.
If China and India alone are allowed to continue with their insatiable consumption of coal, they would offset any reduction in coal consumption in North America and Europe in a decade or so.
Until we acknowledge that solar and wind aren't a credible solution to replace even 50% of coal and natural gas consumption, we can't begin to focus on the real solution.
The only greenhouse gas free solution to replace coal is nuclear.
Nuclear doesn't have to be expensive. It's expensive in the USA and most of Europe because:
- The local nuclear regulatory agencies are being lead by people with the hidden mandate of making nuclear as expensive as possible
- An extremely vocal minority want to get rid of all nuclear power, immediately
- the extremely low volume of new nuclear reactor installations make current technology even more expensive
- the custom of making tiny changes to new nuclear power plants every few years, preventing standardization
- new nuclear research is based on an assumption that current nuclear isn't safe enough (when it actually is plenty safe, there has been zero Generation III nuclear power plant accidents)
- current nuclear technology (light water, solid fuel) are safe because of the plethora of expensive systems used to make it safe
There are nuclear designs that are safe because its designed to be safe (using gravity, chemically stable coolants, the advantage of having the nuclear fuel dissolved with the coolant), yet that tech has been banned for 40 years since it doesn't produce plutonium for nuclear bombs, that tech avoids the vast majority of all expensive safety systems, being walk away safe
I don't love nuclear, I'm just really scared of climate change, and the "let's pretend we're solving it with solar+wind initiative" has gone too far already.
They could move to Detroit (pronounced DEE- troit by hillbillies) where there's lots of roads, rail lines, empty factories and houses, and build wind turbines and solar panels.
Sure beats going into a hole in the ground to dig coal.
...proposal... ...ever.
Say goodbye to everything made from steel. How many windmills does it take to power an electric arc steel mill? All of them aren't enough.
> Coal today is just as clean as other forms of energy when you factor in all the externalities.
No, no it isn't. Coal is far dirtier -- even modern scrubbed plants (of which most aren't) emit mercury and other heavy metals, and SO2. Less than they used to, but more than gas, hydro, wind, nuclear, and solar, which emit none. Both gas and coal emit NOx (the others don't). Extracting coal from the ground is horribly messy -- just ask the good folks who like to drink water in West Virginia. Storing the coal waste is also horribly messy -- just ask the good folks who live along the Dan River in North Carolina and Virginia. Oh, and then there's those pesky CO2 emissions. Coal emits twice as much CO2 as gas per MWh, and of course hydro, nuclear, wind, and solar emit zero or virtually zero.
Coal is far, far dirtier than gas. Coal emits twice the CO2 as gas. In terms of environmental damage, the power plants aren't the same merely because they all have downsides.
> The environmentalists need to learn to quit when they achieve "good enough".
I suspect that they know to quit when they achieve good enough. After all, being an environmentalist is hard work -- the pay sucks if you're even lucky enough to get paid to do it. You're up against deep pockets all the time. The environmentalists won't quit until CO2 emissions are down 80%, and that won't happen so long as we're getting any electricity from coal.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
the global coal market produced over $800 billion (USD) of coal last year; need we say any more about the stupidity and naivety of this article? no one is going to sell that which is worth tens of trillions for a mere $50 billion
But then if there is no more coal, the environmentalists won't be able to blog on the internet about coal's evils, as it will be no longer powering their city and therefore their laptops.