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Buy Coal: the best way for concerned billionaires to fight global warming

57 points by larsiusprime 11y ago

adventured 11y ago
> Frost thinks we should pay the organizations which own underground coal deposits—specifically, the U.S. government—for the right to never mine it. This is a wildly impractical idea. It's so bad, it hardly deserves any serious consideration. There is far more coal still in the ground - to go with deposits that are either expected to be there or have not been found yet - than that which we already have operating mines for. If, for example, you remove US coal from the global supply, the only thing it'll accomplish is to lift prices for the rest of the world's miners (bringing their operations back to high levels of profitability, whereas today the global coal industry is in terrible shape), and encourage the creation of new mines all over the planet. In the process of restricting supply, it'll lift coal back to highly profitable as an industry, and it'll fund the creation of new mines. Unless the plan is to buy all the land on earth of course, so you can guarantee all those untapped coal deposits never come on-line. I'm sure it would only cost a mere few dozen trillion dollars to make a serious dent. Matt Frost's plan should be renamed: The Coal Industry Restoration Act
- arcseco 11y ago
  When the price of coal rises other forms of fuel become more cost competitive. The net result should be a reduction in coal production as utilities switch to other fuels.
  - de_Selby 11y ago
    This appears to be the point the parent comment is missing. Making coal economically uncompetitive speeds the adoption of alternative energy sources
    - adventured 11y ago
      It wouldn't make coal non-competitive, that's the central flaw in the argument. You have to buy the majority of all known coal deposits on earth to accomplish that, and there is far too much land / coal to be purchased to get even remotely close to that. Up to that point, more supply will perpetually come on-line to off-set the price gains, because of the substantial increase in profitability price increases enable. Not to mention that the vast global coal industry that remains - ie those mines not purchased (and there would be vast numbers of those) - will move into high gear and invest into producing more coal, faster, to capture the profits available. It's already very well understood that this is what happens in practice. See: the oil industry. Increase the price of oil from $50 to $200 and see how much supply comes on-line, and the unusual sources it starts coming from (eg tar sands, or two miles below the surface of the ocean).
  - iamsohungry 11y ago
    Yes, but there are other ways to raise the price of coal which don't involve bribing coal companies to stop destroying the world. They're destroying the world, how about they pay for it? You could put a massive property tax on coal mining rights, a massive tax on profits from coal, and/or a massive sales tax on coal. Any of those would achieve the same result, but instead of rewarding sociopathic corporations that are literally destroying the world, they'd put that money in public coffers which could be used, for example, to fund renewable energy. I really don't think we need to bribe coal companies to stop killing us. EDIT: And don't even think of playing the "but if we tax them they'll pass that cost on to consumers" card. Driving up the cost of coal by buying mines will also result in them passing that cost on to consumers. All costs are always passed on to consumers: billionaires are billionaires because they're adept at getting other people to pay for things. At least if the money is going into taxes, it can be passed back to the consumers it was taken from in the form of public programs.
    - gsibble 11y ago
      You really don't seem to have a good grasp on free market economics.
      - iamsohungry 11y ago
        Either present a counterargument or GTFO. Ad-hominem attacks do not contribute to the conversation.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Supply would come on-line to control the price increases, which would completely neutralize any large price spike. We know this is how economics works. We have hundreds of years of commodity market examples to pull from that demonstrate exactly that. The oil industry has provided numerous obvious examples of it in practice in just the last 50 years. This is the flaw at the heart of the plan, that guarantees it can never be feasible. Unless you plan to buy the majority of all coal deposits on earth.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  >> "This is a wildly impractical idea. It's so bad, it hardly deserves any serious consideration." But arguably it may be more effective than the political process. >> "and encourage the creation of new mines all over the planet. In the process of restricting supply, it'll lift coal back to highly profitable as an industry, and it'll fund the creation of new mines." If you read the entire article, it mentions that purchasers should consider buying the more harder to mine deposits first, to counter your concern: "Harstad thinks that his coalition should lease or purchase the hardest coal to access: In other words, the coal that’s most expensive to mine. Then, as demand for coal grows and the price rises—and mining companies start to look more more difficult reserves—they’ll find that coal is already locked up."
pavement 11y ago
You know where coal would be awesome? The moon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification Now all we need are space-based oxidants. Maybe we could capture a large-ish comet or two.
lujim 11y ago
Or take the same amount of money and convert/build plants to use natural gas. It creates half as much CO2 per unit of energy created and we have more of it than we know what to do with right now. Instead of burying all that money in a coal mine we could get some new infrastructure, some jobs, and less CO2.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  but that would decrease price of coal, which would lead to other nations - particularly developing nations like china - to increase their consumption, thereby offsetting most of the ecological benefit from converting/building the natural gas plants.
rch 11y ago
Instead of just attempting to influence the market price, how about targeting coal beds that have significant carbon sequestration potential first? http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.2003.10466206 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.2003.104...
iamsohungry 11y ago
This is stupid. Why are we playing these economic games? These people are literally destroying the environment for all of us, which is already resulting in deaths and billions of dollars of destruction and will likely result in far worse. We don't need to pay them to stop killing us, we need to make laws making what they are doing illegal. The problem isn't that we don't have solutions to global warming. We are still subsidizing fossil fuel energy far more than renewable energy: one easy, obvious step would be to stop doing that but we haven't. The reason we haven't done simple things like that is that it isn't profitable for billionaires. I'm quite tired of the conversation about global warming centering around "finding solutions" as if we don't have solutions. The problem isn't a lack of solutions, it's that amoral corporations control environmental policy and don't care if we all die if it makes them a profit.
- hyperpape 11y ago
  > we need to make laws making what they are doing illegal. In context, you are saying burning coal should be illegal. This is a weighty proposal. You need to either a) describe, in detail, what would happen if burning coal were made illegal (bonus points for discussing how this changes depending on which countries make it illegal, since getting China on board might be rather difficult) or b) respond by admitting that your idea needed a little more thought than you've given it.
  - iamsohungry 11y ago
    > In context, you are saying burning coal should be illegal. In context, I'm saying mining coal should be illegal, but sure, I'll add that burning coal should also be illegal. > You need to either a) describe, in detail, what would happen if burning coal were made illegal No, that's impossible because the effects of illegalization would depend very heavily on how it was illegalized. Obviously I'm not proposing an immediate global ban, that would be stupid. But something along the lines of the Montreal Protocol[1] is certainly doable. Even illegalization over the next 50 years would have some positive effects. It would be quite difficult to find a solution to this problem which is less effective than current pro-coal policies. > (bonus points for discussing how this changes depending on which countries make it illegal, since getting China on board might be rather difficult) You're proposing a perfect solution fallacy[2]. Of course it would be hard to get some countries on board, but even getting just the EU or the US to illegalize coal would have a significant effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...
kbrosnan 11y ago
By raising the price of coal will allow for seams of coal that are less economically viable to be mined. These unviable seams are likely more environmentally damaging to mine. I had a family member that owned property in WV. They looked into the mineral rights for the property. The seam below the property would be difficult to mine due to a near by river. To access the seam the water would need to be diverted. With a high enough price for coal then these sorts of seams become mineable.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  >> "By raising the price of coal will allow for seams of coal that are less economically viable to be mined. These unviable seams are likely more environmentally damaging to mine." Actually, the article mentions that purchasers should consider buying the harder to mine coal deposits first, precisely for that reason: "Harstad thinks that his coalition should lease or purchase the hardest coal to access: In other words, the coal that’s most expensive to mine. Then, as demand for coal grows and the price rises—and mining companies start to look more more difficult reserves—they’ll find that coal is already locked up."
- jacobolus 11y ago
  Unless the price increase puts coal power plants out of business (remember: they have to compete against oil and natural gas [and solar, nuclear, wind, ...]), and kills off demand.
- adventured 11y ago
  Indeed. His plan would be massively damaging environmentally. It would encourage a huge increase in exploration for new deposits, and it would subsidize the worst types of mines. The craziest aspect of it, is the assumption that you could pull a meaningful fraction of known mines off-line to accomplish the end goal of seizing up the coal market (essentially crashing it, such that it can't recover). Here's what would actually happen: Gates & Co. buy up 10% of mines (at a huge $ cost), the price of coal rises say 50%, increasing the profitability of the other 90% of the industry. The other 90% then invests those gains into more output, more exploration, and they bring on-line what were formerly less profitable deposits (Gates & Co. will not be able to buy all of those, the planet is a big place, and there's an extraordinary amount of coal). You would have to buy a truly massive number of mines, in an extremely short amount of time, to accomplish the plan. The moment you start trying to buy up mines, the price of each of them will rise, so you'd have to do it impossibly fast. There's no scenario you can walk through in which it's a feasible plan. Not even close.
BorisMelnik 11y ago
The hardest part for this is going to be convincing the first set of billionaires to take money out of (gold, x commodity) and putting it into coal. Gates will probably have to be a guinea pig and convince some of his other investor friends to do the same, and everyone else will follow suit. That is of course, if you believe global warming is a thing.
- em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
  well at least it requires these global-warming-concerned billionaires to put their money where their mouth is, instead of by enforcing their beliefs on others via the political process.
  - wj 11y ago
    How do they enforce their beliefs via the political process? Last time I checked (in the U.S. at least) you needed to be elected to office in order to pass policy and I don't believe there are that many billionaires in elected office. If you are suggesting they manipulate it with donations then remember that your money spends just as well in Washington as theirs does. And don't forget that global-warming-denier billionaires make campaign contributions as well.
    - em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
      >> "How do they enforce their beliefs via the political process?" By electing and lobbying politicians who make laws. >> "Last time I checked (in the U.S. at least) you needed to be elected to office in order to pass policy and I don't believe there are that many billionaires in elected office." Billionaires don't actually have to be in office in order to enforce their beliefs via the political process. >> "remember that your money spends just as well in Washington as theirs does" Using money to implement laws via politics is rent-seeking behavior. But although my money may spend just as well in Washington as their money does, the key argument this article is making is: market methods can be more effective than political methods for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tomjen3 11y ago
If you want to solve global warming invest in nuclear power and make it so that I can drive to any gas station and have a new battery put in my car that can take me as long as a tank of gas, in a car that isn't far more expensive than my current car. Then maybe we can talk.
epistasis 11y ago
On the face of it, without having any knowledge of the amount of coal out there or the cost of extraction for various amounts of reserves, this seems like it could be feasible. I say that because of the ways to keep this potential carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, there are three points of intervention: 1) buy it and prevent it from ever being burned (cheaper than the coal itself) 2) capture it as it comes out of the smokestack. Estimates I've heard of this are ~$0.06/kWh, which is pretty much the same cost as the electricity, so this is more expensive than buying the fuel before it's been mined 3) extract the CO2 from the air or oceans. Engineered, electricity-based processes for this will likely cost 3x-6x as much energy as the coal generated originally. Biostorage (forrestation, etc..) may or may not be cheaper than this, depending on how effective we can make CO2 sinks. With coal CO2, prevention really is the way to go. Of course, if we had a carbon market where fossil-fuel CO2 emitters had to pay the cost of CO2 extraction, or sequester the carbon themselves, the market would allow quick and efficient solutions, letting innovators profit as they improve CO2 management. Coal/fossil fuels/CO2 emissions are not moral evils that must be stopped at all costs, they must just be stopped at their true market costs.
petra 11y ago
OK. interesting idea. But whenever i look - i don't seem to find the missing piece- how much would it cost and what would get from that cost .I even looked at the original paper by harstad : http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/harstad/htm/deposits.pdf http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/harstad/htm/depo... And none is found. So maybe it's one of those ideas who is only good in theory ?
diogenescynic 11y ago
I've often wondered why there wasn't a charity fund that would just buy up portions of rainforests to turn into nature preserves, similar to the way Norway paid Brazil to protect the Amazon: www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/15/us-climatechange-amazon-norway-idUSKCN0RF1P520150915
- wj 11y ago
  Probably a lot of reasons behind it (and maybe charities like that do exist -- there are a lot of charities out there) but some countries do not allow foreign ownership of land. I believe Mexico you can only get a 99 year lease on land when you "buy" there. Another reason might be distrust of government. Some countries with rain forests do not have the most stable governments (do they seem to be less stable the closer to the equator you get?) and it would be a shame to buy up a lot of land only to have it nationalized or laws not enforced (owners aren't here so who is to stop me from logging it?) when government changes.
- sopooneo 11y ago
  Is this organization anything like what you're describing? http://www.nature.org/about-us/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.about http://www.nature.org/about-us/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.ab...
WalterBright 11y ago
This is the same thing as trying to corner the market by buying up the supply. It doesn't work. The supply will increase faster than anyone can buy it.
robotcookies 11y ago
Buying up coal would raise the price of electricity. That's essentially a flat tax. You punish the poor of the world who use minimal amounts.
- melling 11y ago
  Isn't that what people claim is happening when you make people pay for more expensive renewable energy?
  - adventured 11y ago
    Renewable energy is paid for by rich people, so long as you don't force economic adoption to occur too fast (eg shifting from coal to solar/wind). There's a reasonable economic adoption curve, if you stay on it, then the rich primarily subsidize the shift - if you move too fast, and to the extent you do so, you punish the poor too much. The rich pay for the shift through their higher taxes (government R&D, subsidies, etc), funding research at top tier universities, owning large corporations that do R&D or implementation (eg Musk / SolarCity, or Walton / FirstSolar and so on), buying big batteries for their homes, being first to adopt large scale home solar, building massive solar plants or wind farms (or being customers ala Buffett / Berkshire / Mid-American). This is similar to the way the rich subsidize most new technology until it becomes economical.
- SirWart 11y ago
  Plus, the world's poor stand to benefit so much from climate change!
- contravariant 11y ago
  Yeah it'd make more sense to tax coal. That will still affect the price of electricity, but at least you'd have some money to mitigate those effects. Ironically it seems that rich people have the most interest in preventing that from happening.
ChrisLomont 11y ago
This fails basic economic checks: First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. To get that, they'd have to sell off their companies, which usually lowers the value, so the cash to purchase needs to come from others willing to put billions of cash into purchasing these companies. The economic loss from this step would be huge. Next, how much of the coal supply can they affect? The US mines about a billion tons a year of coal, and has done so for many years, with value about 50/ton, making this around 50 billion a year in produced value. Presumably the places we mine coal has much left (many places put our coal supply at about 400 years worth). This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude. So the sheer number of billionaires needing to liquidate their companies, sucking the capital out of circulation, just to purchase land they will never extract any value from, makes this approach a non-starter. It just would not make much dent, if any, since closing a few mines will not reduce demand; others would likely step up production. This money would likely be much better used to invest in new energy research to wean us off coal in the long run.
- migsvult 11y ago
  "First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. ... The economic loss from this step would be huge." There would be no economic loss. In real terms, the companies that the billionaires are selling are just as valuable. The sellers might be big enough to cause the paper value to go down temporarily, but it would only hurt the sellers themselves. And obviously, in nominal terms the cash would enter right back into the economy once the coal was purchased. So there would be near-zero negative impact to the overall economy from the asset sales. "This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude." It's hard to get exact numbers, but the total value of US coal is many many times higher than the value of just the mineral rights. The legal right to mine $50 worth of coal is obviously worth way, way less than $50. In other words, you can wipe out a huge amount of coal usage with smartly bought mineral rights, especially, like the story alludes to, if you buy them in such a way as to be inconvinient to everyone around you. I think the basic idea is sound. The main problem would be that such a solution would be profoundly regressive. Western billionaires literally plunging poor people into darkness. It's probably not a bad plan B if an international political solution fails and things get very dire.
d4nt 11y ago
The idea of just keeping the carbon in the ground makes sense. But it would be simpler (and require a lot less capital) to just impose punitive taxes on coal mines and coal imports. The mining companies pass the cost on, renewables become more attractive, no complicated capping and trading system necessary. The only problem I can see with this is that the WTO probably forbids it. But one would hope that everyone involved could get together and make an exception for the sake of saving millions of lives.
a3n 11y ago
Lots of economic reasons in these threads why this technically feasible (if disruptive) solution can't come to be. Maybe a better use of these billionaire saviours time and money would be to invest in solar and other renewable energy sources, as well as water desalination (the connection being high energy cost). Be a sun baron.
Hytosys 11y ago
Despite the fundamental economic problems with this proposition listed elsewhere here, I'm just floored by the political implications: There is hardly such a thing as a "climate-concerned billionaire." Mostly there just exists the "capital-concerned billionaire." The writer is enamored with the capitalist class, but there have been no signs in the history of ever that it systemically works in the interest of the massive people or its planet. Who is the author really trying to appeal to? Are they still trying to convince the affected people that we can depend on the unaffected people to be saviors? Where the hell is the Atlantic article titled "Destroy Capitalism: the only way for billions of concerned people to save themselves and their environment"?
- stickfigure 11y ago
  My roommate recently became the Director of Technology of https://nextgenclimate.org/ https://nextgenclimate.org/ It's an environmental advocacy organization funded by Tom Steyer. So, there certainly is such a thing as a "climate-concerned billionaire".
  - Hytosys 11y ago
    My keyword was "hardly," as in the capitalist class does not care about the climate. My intention was not to demonize individuals and generalize all people into two types (those who are rich and hate Earth and those who are poor and love Earth). My intention was to give a realistic analysis on the mechanism of capitalism, which is something this author failed to recognize altogether. By the way, tell your roommate that "AMERICA DOESN'T IGNORE PROBLEMS" is not readable on whatever devices that the 600,000 US homeless people are using.
mrfusion 11y ago
Wouldn't buying lumber and burying it also work?
aaron695 11y ago
This fails a basic sanity check. We need X amount of energy per year and increasing. Energy = money = health and well being, so this has to continue and quicker. Morally the worlds poor deserve this. If you take away cheap energy people will spend more money and effort on more expensive energy sources. This might include more environmental solutions but will mostly be dirtier fossil fuels. No one likes energy dependence and cheap cleaner solutions are what almost everyone wants. It'll happen as technology matures enough to allow it to happen. Full steam ahead is the best and moral solution. As is pointed out in other comments the cost alone to even make a dent is conveniently not mentioned anywhere. It'd be trillions to do nothing but keep something in the ground. We need to move forward.
Gravityloss 11y ago
I think articles and philosophies like this are symptomatic of the resignation of a democratic civil society. Humankind is supposed to be begging a few eccentric billionaires to do these things for everyone - instead of making enlightened laws and just doing them.

57 points by larsiusprime 11y ago

> Frost thinks we should pay the organizations which own underground coal deposits—specifically, the U.S. government—for the right to never mine it. This is a wildly impractical idea. It's so bad, it hardly deserves any serious consideration. There is far more coal still in the ground - to go with deposits that are either expected to be there or have not been found yet - than that which we already have operating mines for. If, for example, you remove US coal from the global supply, the only thing it'll accomplish is to lift prices for the rest of the world's miners (bringing their operations back to high levels of profitability, whereas today the global coal industry is in terrible shape), and encourage the creation of new mines all over the planet. In the process of restricting supply, it'll lift coal back to highly profitable as an industry, and it'll fund the creation of new mines. Unless the plan is to buy all the land on earth of course, so you can guarantee all those untapped coal deposits never come on-line. I'm sure it would only cost a mere few dozen trillion dollars to make a serious dent. Matt Frost's plan should be renamed: The Coal Industry Restoration Act

arcseco 11y ago
When the price of coal rises other forms of fuel become more cost competitive. The net result should be a reduction in coal production as utilities switch to other fuels.
- de_Selby 11y ago
  This appears to be the point the parent comment is missing. Making coal economically uncompetitive speeds the adoption of alternative energy sources
  - adventured 11y ago
    It wouldn't make coal non-competitive, that's the central flaw in the argument. You have to buy the majority of all known coal deposits on earth to accomplish that, and there is far too much land / coal to be purchased to get even remotely close to that. Up to that point, more supply will perpetually come on-line to off-set the price gains, because of the substantial increase in profitability price increases enable. Not to mention that the vast global coal industry that remains - ie those mines not purchased (and there would be vast numbers of those) - will move into high gear and invest into producing more coal, faster, to capture the profits available. It's already very well understood that this is what happens in practice. See: the oil industry. Increase the price of oil from $50 to $200 and see how much supply comes on-line, and the unusual sources it starts coming from (eg tar sands, or two miles below the surface of the ocean).
- iamsohungry 11y ago
  Yes, but there are other ways to raise the price of coal which don't involve bribing coal companies to stop destroying the world. They're destroying the world, how about they pay for it? You could put a massive property tax on coal mining rights, a massive tax on profits from coal, and/or a massive sales tax on coal. Any of those would achieve the same result, but instead of rewarding sociopathic corporations that are literally destroying the world, they'd put that money in public coffers which could be used, for example, to fund renewable energy. I really don't think we need to bribe coal companies to stop killing us. EDIT: And don't even think of playing the "but if we tax them they'll pass that cost on to consumers" card. Driving up the cost of coal by buying mines will also result in them passing that cost on to consumers. All costs are always passed on to consumers: billionaires are billionaires because they're adept at getting other people to pay for things. At least if the money is going into taxes, it can be passed back to the consumers it was taken from in the form of public programs.
  - gsibble 11y ago
    You really don't seem to have a good grasp on free market economics.
    - iamsohungry 11y ago
      Either present a counterargument or GTFO. Ad-hominem attacks do not contribute to the conversation.
- adventured 11y ago
  Supply would come on-line to control the price increases, which would completely neutralize any large price spike. We know this is how economics works. We have hundreds of years of commodity market examples to pull from that demonstrate exactly that. The oil industry has provided numerous obvious examples of it in practice in just the last 50 years. This is the flaw at the heart of the plan, that guarantees it can never be feasible. Unless you plan to buy the majority of all coal deposits on earth.
em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
>> "This is a wildly impractical idea. It's so bad, it hardly deserves any serious consideration." But arguably it may be more effective than the political process. >> "and encourage the creation of new mines all over the planet. In the process of restricting supply, it'll lift coal back to highly profitable as an industry, and it'll fund the creation of new mines." If you read the entire article, it mentions that purchasers should consider buying the more harder to mine deposits first, to counter your concern: "Harstad thinks that his coalition should lease or purchase the hardest coal to access: In other words, the coal that’s most expensive to mine. Then, as demand for coal grows and the price rises—and mining companies start to look more more difficult reserves—they’ll find that coal is already locked up."

pavement 11y ago

You know where coal would be awesome? The moon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_coal_gasification Now all we need are space-based oxidants. Maybe we could capture a large-ish comet or two.

lujim 11y ago

Or take the same amount of money and convert/build plants to use natural gas. It creates half as much CO2 per unit of energy created and we have more of it than we know what to do with right now. Instead of burying all that money in a coal mine we could get some new infrastructure, some jobs, and less CO2.

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
but that would decrease price of coal, which would lead to other nations - particularly developing nations like china - to increase their consumption, thereby offsetting most of the ecological benefit from converting/building the natural gas plants.

rch 11y ago

Instead of just attempting to influence the market price, how about targeting coal beds that have significant carbon sequestration potential first? http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.2003.10466206 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.2003.104...

iamsohungry 11y ago

This is stupid. Why are we playing these economic games? These people are literally destroying the environment for all of us, which is already resulting in deaths and billions of dollars of destruction and will likely result in far worse. We don't need to pay them to stop killing us, we need to make laws making what they are doing illegal. The problem isn't that we don't have solutions to global warming. We are still subsidizing fossil fuel energy far more than renewable energy: one easy, obvious step would be to stop doing that but we haven't. The reason we haven't done simple things like that is that it isn't profitable for billionaires. I'm quite tired of the conversation about global warming centering around "finding solutions" as if we don't have solutions. The problem isn't a lack of solutions, it's that amoral corporations control environmental policy and don't care if we all die if it makes them a profit.

hyperpape 11y ago
> we need to make laws making what they are doing illegal. In context, you are saying burning coal should be illegal. This is a weighty proposal. You need to either a) describe, in detail, what would happen if burning coal were made illegal (bonus points for discussing how this changes depending on which countries make it illegal, since getting China on board might be rather difficult) or b) respond by admitting that your idea needed a little more thought than you've given it.
- iamsohungry 11y ago
  > In context, you are saying burning coal should be illegal. In context, I'm saying mining coal should be illegal, but sure, I'll add that burning coal should also be illegal. > You need to either a) describe, in detail, what would happen if burning coal were made illegal No, that's impossible because the effects of illegalization would depend very heavily on how it was illegalized. Obviously I'm not proposing an immediate global ban, that would be stupid. But something along the lines of the Montreal Protocol[1] is certainly doable. Even illegalization over the next 50 years would have some positive effects. It would be quite difficult to find a solution to this problem which is less effective than current pro-coal policies. > (bonus points for discussing how this changes depending on which countries make it illegal, since getting China on board might be rather difficult) You're proposing a perfect solution fallacy[2]. Of course it would be hard to get some countries on board, but even getting just the EU or the US to illegalize coal would have a significant effect. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_solution_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy#Perfect_soluti...

kbrosnan 11y ago

By raising the price of coal will allow for seams of coal that are less economically viable to be mined. These unviable seams are likely more environmentally damaging to mine. I had a family member that owned property in WV. They looked into the mineral rights for the property. The seam below the property would be difficult to mine due to a near by river. To access the seam the water would need to be diverted. With a high enough price for coal then these sorts of seams become mineable.

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
>> "By raising the price of coal will allow for seams of coal that are less economically viable to be mined. These unviable seams are likely more environmentally damaging to mine." Actually, the article mentions that purchasers should consider buying the harder to mine coal deposits first, precisely for that reason: "Harstad thinks that his coalition should lease or purchase the hardest coal to access: In other words, the coal that’s most expensive to mine. Then, as demand for coal grows and the price rises—and mining companies start to look more more difficult reserves—they’ll find that coal is already locked up."
jacobolus 11y ago
Unless the price increase puts coal power plants out of business (remember: they have to compete against oil and natural gas [and solar, nuclear, wind, ...]), and kills off demand.
adventured 11y ago
Indeed. His plan would be massively damaging environmentally. It would encourage a huge increase in exploration for new deposits, and it would subsidize the worst types of mines. The craziest aspect of it, is the assumption that you could pull a meaningful fraction of known mines off-line to accomplish the end goal of seizing up the coal market (essentially crashing it, such that it can't recover). Here's what would actually happen: Gates & Co. buy up 10% of mines (at a huge $ cost), the price of coal rises say 50%, increasing the profitability of the other 90% of the industry. The other 90% then invests those gains into more output, more exploration, and they bring on-line what were formerly less profitable deposits (Gates & Co. will not be able to buy all of those, the planet is a big place, and there's an extraordinary amount of coal). You would have to buy a truly massive number of mines, in an extremely short amount of time, to accomplish the plan. The moment you start trying to buy up mines, the price of each of them will rise, so you'd have to do it impossibly fast. There's no scenario you can walk through in which it's a feasible plan. Not even close.

BorisMelnik 11y ago

The hardest part for this is going to be convincing the first set of billionaires to take money out of (gold, x commodity) and putting it into coal. Gates will probably have to be a guinea pig and convince some of his other investor friends to do the same, and everyone else will follow suit. That is of course, if you believe global warming is a thing.

em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
well at least it requires these global-warming-concerned billionaires to put their money where their mouth is, instead of by enforcing their beliefs on others via the political process.
- wj 11y ago
  How do they enforce their beliefs via the political process? Last time I checked (in the U.S. at least) you needed to be elected to office in order to pass policy and I don't believe there are that many billionaires in elected office. If you are suggesting they manipulate it with donations then remember that your money spends just as well in Washington as theirs does. And don't forget that global-warming-denier billionaires make campaign contributions as well.
  - em3rgent0rdr 11y ago
    >> "How do they enforce their beliefs via the political process?" By electing and lobbying politicians who make laws. >> "Last time I checked (in the U.S. at least) you needed to be elected to office in order to pass policy and I don't believe there are that many billionaires in elected office." Billionaires don't actually have to be in office in order to enforce their beliefs via the political process. >> "remember that your money spends just as well in Washington as theirs does" Using money to implement laws via politics is rent-seeking behavior. But although my money may spend just as well in Washington as their money does, the key argument this article is making is: market methods can be more effective than political methods for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

deleted 11y ago

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tomjen3 11y ago

If you want to solve global warming invest in nuclear power and make it so that I can drive to any gas station and have a new battery put in my car that can take me as long as a tank of gas, in a car that isn't far more expensive than my current car. Then maybe we can talk.

epistasis 11y ago

On the face of it, without having any knowledge of the amount of coal out there or the cost of extraction for various amounts of reserves, this seems like it could be feasible. I say that because of the ways to keep this potential carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, there are three points of intervention: 1) buy it and prevent it from ever being burned (cheaper than the coal itself) 2) capture it as it comes out of the smokestack. Estimates I've heard of this are ~$0.06/kWh, which is pretty much the same cost as the electricity, so this is more expensive than buying the fuel before it's been mined 3) extract the CO2 from the air or oceans. Engineered, electricity-based processes for this will likely cost 3x-6x as much energy as the coal generated originally. Biostorage (forrestation, etc..) may or may not be cheaper than this, depending on how effective we can make CO2 sinks. With coal CO2, prevention really is the way to go. Of course, if we had a carbon market where fossil-fuel CO2 emitters had to pay the cost of CO2 extraction, or sequester the carbon themselves, the market would allow quick and efficient solutions, letting innovators profit as they improve CO2 management. Coal/fossil fuels/CO2 emissions are not moral evils that must be stopped at all costs, they must just be stopped at their true market costs.

petra 11y ago

OK. interesting idea. But whenever i look - i don't seem to find the missing piece- how much would it cost and what would get from that cost .I even looked at the original paper by harstad : http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/harstad/htm/deposits.pdf http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/harstad/htm/depo... And none is found. So maybe it's one of those ideas who is only good in theory ?

diogenescynic 11y ago

I've often wondered why there wasn't a charity fund that would just buy up portions of rainforests to turn into nature preserves, similar to the way Norway paid Brazil to protect the Amazon: www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/15/us-climatechange-amazon-norway-idUSKCN0RF1P520150915

wj 11y ago
Probably a lot of reasons behind it (and maybe charities like that do exist -- there are a lot of charities out there) but some countries do not allow foreign ownership of land. I believe Mexico you can only get a 99 year lease on land when you "buy" there. Another reason might be distrust of government. Some countries with rain forests do not have the most stable governments (do they seem to be less stable the closer to the equator you get?) and it would be a shame to buy up a lot of land only to have it nationalized or laws not enforced (owners aren't here so who is to stop me from logging it?) when government changes.
sopooneo 11y ago
Is this organization anything like what you're describing? http://www.nature.org/about-us/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.about http://www.nature.org/about-us/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.ab...

WalterBright 11y ago

This is the same thing as trying to corner the market by buying up the supply. It doesn't work. The supply will increase faster than anyone can buy it.

robotcookies 11y ago

Buying up coal would raise the price of electricity. That's essentially a flat tax. You punish the poor of the world who use minimal amounts.

melling 11y ago
Isn't that what people claim is happening when you make people pay for more expensive renewable energy?
- adventured 11y ago
  Renewable energy is paid for by rich people, so long as you don't force economic adoption to occur too fast (eg shifting from coal to solar/wind). There's a reasonable economic adoption curve, if you stay on it, then the rich primarily subsidize the shift - if you move too fast, and to the extent you do so, you punish the poor too much. The rich pay for the shift through their higher taxes (government R&D, subsidies, etc), funding research at top tier universities, owning large corporations that do R&D or implementation (eg Musk / SolarCity, or Walton / FirstSolar and so on), buying big batteries for their homes, being first to adopt large scale home solar, building massive solar plants or wind farms (or being customers ala Buffett / Berkshire / Mid-American). This is similar to the way the rich subsidize most new technology until it becomes economical.
SirWart 11y ago
Plus, the world's poor stand to benefit so much from climate change!
contravariant 11y ago
Yeah it'd make more sense to tax coal. That will still affect the price of electricity, but at least you'd have some money to mitigate those effects. Ironically it seems that rich people have the most interest in preventing that from happening.

ChrisLomont 11y ago

This fails basic economic checks: First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. To get that, they'd have to sell off their companies, which usually lowers the value, so the cash to purchase needs to come from others willing to put billions of cash into purchasing these companies. The economic loss from this step would be huge. Next, how much of the coal supply can they affect? The US mines about a billion tons a year of coal, and has done so for many years, with value about 50/ton, making this around 50 billion a year in produced value. Presumably the places we mine coal has much left (many places put our coal supply at about 400 years worth). This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude. So the sheer number of billionaires needing to liquidate their companies, sucking the capital out of circulation, just to purchase land they will never extract any value from, makes this approach a non-starter. It just would not make much dent, if any, since closing a few mines will not reduce demand; others would likely step up production. This money would likely be much better used to invest in new energy research to wean us off coal in the long run.

migsvult 11y ago
"First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. ... The economic loss from this step would be huge." There would be no economic loss. In real terms, the companies that the billionaires are selling are just as valuable. The sellers might be big enough to cause the paper value to go down temporarily, but it would only hurt the sellers themselves. And obviously, in nominal terms the cash would enter right back into the economy once the coal was purchased. So there would be near-zero negative impact to the overall economy from the asset sales. "This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude." It's hard to get exact numbers, but the total value of US coal is many many times higher than the value of just the mineral rights. The legal right to mine $50 worth of coal is obviously worth way, way less than $50. In other words, you can wipe out a huge amount of coal usage with smartly bought mineral rights, especially, like the story alludes to, if you buy them in such a way as to be inconvinient to everyone around you. I think the basic idea is sound. The main problem would be that such a solution would be profoundly regressive. Western billionaires literally plunging poor people into darkness. It's probably not a bad plan B if an international political solution fails and things get very dire.

d4nt 11y ago

The idea of just keeping the carbon in the ground makes sense. But it would be simpler (and require a lot less capital) to just impose punitive taxes on coal mines and coal imports. The mining companies pass the cost on, renewables become more attractive, no complicated capping and trading system necessary. The only problem I can see with this is that the WTO probably forbids it. But one would hope that everyone involved could get together and make an exception for the sake of saving millions of lives.

a3n 11y ago

Lots of economic reasons in these threads why this technically feasible (if disruptive) solution can't come to be. Maybe a better use of these billionaire saviours time and money would be to invest in solar and other renewable energy sources, as well as water desalination (the connection being high energy cost). Be a sun baron.

Hytosys 11y ago

Despite the fundamental economic problems with this proposition listed elsewhere here, I'm just floored by the political implications: There is hardly such a thing as a "climate-concerned billionaire." Mostly there just exists the "capital-concerned billionaire." The writer is enamored with the capitalist class, but there have been no signs in the history of ever that it systemically works in the interest of the massive people or its planet. Who is the author really trying to appeal to? Are they still trying to convince the affected people that we can depend on the unaffected people to be saviors? Where the hell is the Atlantic article titled "Destroy Capitalism: the only way for billions of concerned people to save themselves and their environment"?

stickfigure 11y ago
My roommate recently became the Director of Technology of https://nextgenclimate.org/ https://nextgenclimate.org/ It's an environmental advocacy organization funded by Tom Steyer. So, there certainly is such a thing as a "climate-concerned billionaire".
- Hytosys 11y ago
  My keyword was "hardly," as in the capitalist class does not care about the climate. My intention was not to demonize individuals and generalize all people into two types (those who are rich and hate Earth and those who are poor and love Earth). My intention was to give a realistic analysis on the mechanism of capitalism, which is something this author failed to recognize altogether. By the way, tell your roommate that "AMERICA DOESN'T IGNORE PROBLEMS" is not readable on whatever devices that the 600,000 US homeless people are using.

mrfusion 11y ago

Wouldn't buying lumber and burying it also work?

aaron695 11y ago

This fails a basic sanity check. We need X amount of energy per year and increasing. Energy = money = health and well being, so this has to continue and quicker. Morally the worlds poor deserve this. If you take away cheap energy people will spend more money and effort on more expensive energy sources. This might include more environmental solutions but will mostly be dirtier fossil fuels. No one likes energy dependence and cheap cleaner solutions are what almost everyone wants. It'll happen as technology matures enough to allow it to happen. Full steam ahead is the best and moral solution. As is pointed out in other comments the cost alone to even make a dent is conveniently not mentioned anywhere. It'd be trillions to do nothing but keep something in the ground. We need to move forward.

Gravityloss 11y ago

I think articles and philosophies like this are symptomatic of the resignation of a democratic civil society. Humankind is supposed to be begging a few eccentric billionaires to do these things for everyone - instead of making enlightened laws and just doing them.