8 ms·

Many of the west's coal power plants are powered from Wyoming coal. Lots of ways of life about to go away, lots of people desperately trying to protect the old.

by 65827 10y ago

Many of the west's coal power plants are powered from Wyoming coal. Lots of ways of life about to go away, lots of people desperately trying to protect the old. So strange to see this same theme repeated over and over in history, you'd think we'd learn after seeing this for so many centuries.

city41 10y ago
When it's your way of life that is threatened, it's hard to heed that lesson.
- 65827 10y ago
  My way of life was just upended in October by machine learning, I didn't fight it instead I just switched careers. Not sure why others are so unwilling to do the same. I think this is a very important point, in the past illiteracy used to be defined as people who couldn't read, in the future I think it's going to come to mean the people who can't or are unwilling to adapt and learn, we'll look down on them with pity like we used to all the people who couldn't read back in the 70s.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    I'm curious, what did you do before?
    - jes5199 10y ago
      software engineer
  - grogenaut 10y ago
    Also curious. How far out did you see it coming?
  - rosser 10y ago
    If you're on HN, it's very, very likely that you have a skill set, and knowledge base that makes career-changing fairly easy (relatively speaking, anyway). If you've worked in a factory all your life, and suddenly all the factories around where you — and your well-established, extended family — live are closed down, or moved overseas, or whatever, you're probably going to be a bit less sanguine about the situation. The myopia of tech people will probably never not astound me.
    - chrischen 10y ago
      It should be the government's job to provide an ecosystem that provides jobs and opportunity to its citizens, and when it fails its the governments job to pay for the shortcomings.l directly. Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything, myopic we are or not.
      - wmccullough 10y ago
        > "It should be the government's job to provide an ecosystem that provides jobs and opportunity to its citizens, and when it fails its the governments job to pay for the shortcomings.l directly." > "Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything" So care to explain that a bit better? I think you just contradicted yourself. The government has no business anywhere near the job market. Go read about the subsidized corn market if you want to see their brand of job creation in action. For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society when we should have been doing it as citizens.
        crdoconnor 10y ago
        >The government has no business anywhere near the job market. Go read about the subsidized corn market if you want to see their brand of job creation in action. Or drive through the Lincoln Tunnel or use electricity from the Hoover Dam. Or fly from LaGuardia to LAX. >For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society Maybe corporate welfare should be cut to the bone first.
        10y ago
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Not sure why others are so unwilling to do the same. "Unwilling." Going back into your comment history it appears you have had some struggles along these lines, so maybe ixnay the condescending illiteracy angle. Did you used to have any previous HN accounts, maybe from the period where you were being "upended?" Probably some gold in there, too.
- pjc50 10y ago
  There's a bunch of people living on coastlines whose way of life is also threatened by continuing to mine coal, but most of them aren't in America.
- jimnotgym 10y ago
  It is interesting that Elon Musk thinks electricity generation from utility companies is safe from his products. In fact he expects usage to go up, as people move to electric heating
  - rhizome 10y ago
    Where's the interesting part?
- Gravityloss 10y ago
  I understood the lesson a completely different one: that those whose jobs are destroyed by some larger event, should be supported?
- org3432 10y ago
  Right, our way of life is living on land and not underwater as well. :)
rayiner 10y ago
What lesson should they take away? How many examples are there if places like Wyoming surviving a major technological transition away from its primary economic engine? The fact that it may be globally optimal to switch generation technologies doesn't mean it's locally optimal for Wyoming (within a political system that doesn't let Wyoming recoup local losses from national gains).
- euyyn 10y ago
  The lesson that you can't fight the tide. You can force your own utilities to use only coal, and that'll only make them less competitive. Later you'll have to force them not to buy more affordable power from utilities outside the state, which use renewables. As a result, the cost of living and the cost of doing business increases for everyone in your state, comparatively. You might as well have increased taxes. When the time comes when you're forced to face reality, you regret not having instead used all that extra imposed cost to retrain your workforce and incentivize your industry to move to more promising businesses.
samirillian 10y ago
If we learn anything from history, it's that nobody learns from history.
astrodust 10y ago
> Lots of ways of life about to go away... If you're a coal miner and coal mining has been in your family for generations it's going to be a bit sad when that comes to an end, but you know what? Good. The last thing we need to do is send people down deep into the earth to dig up coal so we can burn it in power plants and fuck up the air so badly that some people actually die from it. China's learning this lesson, and it's about time that America committed to the same. Shut them all down. Stop blowing up mountains to chase after chunks of coal. Lots of ways of life are about to go away, but this is not new. Think of how many people were involved in the horse business. How many people had to deal with lepers. How many people were put out of work by steam shovels. How many were displaced by factories. Things change. This is good, because if we don't change everyone's way of life is about to go away when the climate change gets so bad that most of the continental US is uninhabitable, under water, or both.

by 65827 10y ago

city41 10y ago

When it's your way of life that is threatened, it's hard to heed that lesson.

65827 10y ago
My way of life was just upended in October by machine learning, I didn't fight it instead I just switched careers. Not sure why others are so unwilling to do the same. I think this is a very important point, in the past illiteracy used to be defined as people who couldn't read, in the future I think it's going to come to mean the people who can't or are unwilling to adapt and learn, we'll look down on them with pity like we used to all the people who couldn't read back in the 70s.
- icebraining 10y ago
  I'm curious, what did you do before?
  - jes5199 10y ago
    software engineer
- grogenaut 10y ago
  Also curious. How far out did you see it coming?
- rosser 10y ago
  If you're on HN, it's very, very likely that you have a skill set, and knowledge base that makes career-changing fairly easy (relatively speaking, anyway). If you've worked in a factory all your life, and suddenly all the factories around where you — and your well-established, extended family — live are closed down, or moved overseas, or whatever, you're probably going to be a bit less sanguine about the situation. The myopia of tech people will probably never not astound me.
  - chrischen 10y ago
    It should be the government's job to provide an ecosystem that provides jobs and opportunity to its citizens, and when it fails its the governments job to pay for the shortcomings.l directly. Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything, myopic we are or not.
    - wmccullough 10y ago
      > "It should be the government's job to provide an ecosystem that provides jobs and opportunity to its citizens, and when it fails its the governments job to pay for the shortcomings.l directly." > "Expecting the government to patch the syptoms of the problem doesn't fix anything" So care to explain that a bit better? I think you just contradicted yourself. The government has no business anywhere near the job market. Go read about the subsidized corn market if you want to see their brand of job creation in action. For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society when we should have been doing it as citizens.
      - crdoconnor 10y ago
        >The government has no business anywhere near the job market. Go read about the subsidized corn market if you want to see their brand of job creation in action. Or drive through the Lincoln Tunnel or use electricity from the Hoover Dam. Or fly from LaGuardia to LAX. >For too long we've expected the government to take care of the needs of society Maybe corporate welfare should be cut to the bone first.
      - 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rhizome 10y ago
  Not sure why others are so unwilling to do the same. "Unwilling." Going back into your comment history it appears you have had some struggles along these lines, so maybe ixnay the condescending illiteracy angle. Did you used to have any previous HN accounts, maybe from the period where you were being "upended?" Probably some gold in there, too.
pjc50 10y ago
There's a bunch of people living on coastlines whose way of life is also threatened by continuing to mine coal, but most of them aren't in America.
jimnotgym 10y ago
It is interesting that Elon Musk thinks electricity generation from utility companies is safe from his products. In fact he expects usage to go up, as people move to electric heating
- rhizome 10y ago
  Where's the interesting part?
Gravityloss 10y ago
I understood the lesson a completely different one: that those whose jobs are destroyed by some larger event, should be supported?
org3432 10y ago
Right, our way of life is living on land and not underwater as well. :)

rayiner 10y ago

What lesson should they take away? How many examples are there if places like Wyoming surviving a major technological transition away from its primary economic engine? The fact that it may be globally optimal to switch generation technologies doesn't mean it's locally optimal for Wyoming (within a political system that doesn't let Wyoming recoup local losses from national gains).

euyyn 10y ago
The lesson that you can't fight the tide. You can force your own utilities to use only coal, and that'll only make them less competitive. Later you'll have to force them not to buy more affordable power from utilities outside the state, which use renewables. As a result, the cost of living and the cost of doing business increases for everyone in your state, comparatively. You might as well have increased taxes. When the time comes when you're forced to face reality, you regret not having instead used all that extra imposed cost to retrain your workforce and incentivize your industry to move to more promising businesses.

samirillian 10y ago

If we learn anything from history, it's that nobody learns from history.

astrodust 10y ago

> Lots of ways of life about to go away... If you're a coal miner and coal mining has been in your family for generations it's going to be a bit sad when that comes to an end, but you know what? Good. The last thing we need to do is send people down deep into the earth to dig up coal so we can burn it in power plants and fuck up the air so badly that some people actually die from it. China's learning this lesson, and it's about time that America committed to the same. Shut them all down. Stop blowing up mountains to chase after chunks of coal. Lots of ways of life are about to go away, but this is not new. Think of how many people were involved in the horse business. How many people had to deal with lepers. How many people were put out of work by steam shovels. How many were displaced by factories. Things change. This is good, because if we don't change everyone's way of life is about to go away when the climate change gets so bad that most of the continental US is uninhabitable, under water, or both.