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Environmentalists Propose $50 Billion Buyout of Coal Industry - To Shut It Down

Posted by Unknown on from the could-but-won't-because-reality dept.

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?"

5 of 712 comments (clear)

  1. This is what Thatcher was good at by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 0, Troll

    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.
    1. Re:This is what Thatcher was good at by i+kan+reed · · Score: 0, Troll

      Yes, it's okay to hate thatcher, if you're British. She did terrible fucking things to her own country in pursuit of an unworkable ideology. It'd be okay to hate Stalin this much if you lived under him.

    2. Re:This is what Thatcher was good at by Garridan · · Score: 0, Troll

      Maybe that's because Stalin was a totalitarian, which totally jives with the conservative mindset. Want to know who else conservatives didn't celebrate the demise of? Hitler. Is that because conservatives are evil? No. It's because they're too blind with greed to recognize any evil other than "taxes" (which they desperately depend upon to keep their businesses solvent).

    3. Re:This is what Thatcher was good at by CanHasDIY · · Score: 0, Troll

      Didn't Hate Week sate your hatred? You know, the week after she died when you had hate parades to show just how much you hated her.

      FWIW, so did the Munchkins, after Dorothy landed her house on the wicked witch.

      Sometimes a "hate parade" is appropriate, when the person being hated was a royal fuckwad.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    4. Re:This is what Thatcher was good at by Pino+Grigio · · Score: 0, Troll

      It was a Conservative government that declared war on Hitler, a Conservative Prime Minister who ran the campaign and a Conservative Prime Minister who helped end the Cold War. Did the Left contribute much to these victories? I mean apart from supplying a steady stream of useful idiots for CND and the Soviets post 1945.