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I think it is - imagine how much better off these people would be if they spent less on fuel - $50 in gas on a $750 monthly budget is proportionally near what I

I think it is - imagine how much better off these people would be if they spent less on fuel - $50 in gas on a $750 monthly budget is proportionally near what I spend on RENT with my (pre-tax) salary. I'm not sure coal can compete with fracking so the coal jobs are moot.

hpcjoe 9y ago
Coal was viable as a fuel until a few years ago. Then the environmental regulations hit full force, and forced many of these companies under. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but worth repeating. Decisions have consequences. Deciding that you will enforce a particular tax/regulation policy based upon perceived (real or otherwise) environmental harm means that the people who depend upon those industries for their livelihood, are going to suffer. Coal is still cheaper (pre-regulations to kill the industry). Fracking is a response to a) offshore drilling restriction regs and b) OPEC raising its cost per barrel to the point where it becomes economically viable. Coal is even better, albeit a dirtier fuel, from a cost perspective. But it has been regulated into economic impracticality, by the previous administration. OPEC tried to kill fracking, after their proxies in the US failed to get it turned off, by driving the price per barrel down to levels where it was economically infeasible to use fracking. However, they didn't count on technological development and newer field discoveries. Which actually enabled fracking to reduce the crossover to profitability point below where OPEC was aiming. While this was happening, we all enjoyed the benefit of competition and lower prices for fuel. OPEC has since cried UNCLE and has given up this direction. The point for coal being, that, had the regulations not been enacted, much of what is discussed in this story would not be the case. But they were enacted, because some people felt that their connection to the environment was far more important than other peoples livelihood. Yes, it really is that simple. While I'd love to see us transition to cleaner tech over time, I recognize that there is economic momentum in existing energy tech. Losing this economic momentum means that we consign a non-negligible fraction of our neighbors to effectively an economic dustbin. The rust belt was a prototype for this from an economic view ... it became less expensive to manufacture out of country, so we did. Manufacturing naturally flows to the lowest cost areas, to maximize profits and margins. Manufacturing employs large swaths of people who learn niche jobs, and aren't mobile to find new jobs, when old ones go away. Generally speaking, you can't fight economics. You can distort it with regulations and taxes. But it will eventually settle on an equilibrium. And karma is, as it were ... painful ...
- thaumaturgy 9y ago
  I think you're making a lot of good points here, but: > Coal is still cheaper... This is only true when you socialize the long-term costs incurred by coal. Regulation is an attempt to push some of those costs back onto the companies that incur them, and then it turns out that coal isn't so cheap after all. I suppose that since "regulation" is becoming a dirty word in politics, and especially with the influence from fringe libertarians, we could instead provide government-funded lawyers to sue any coal-producing company on behalf of any individual or community that can provide any evidence that coal production harmed them in some way. We could set up expedited courts for it and allow any coal-producing company to be litigated against even if they weren't directly responsible for the injury, and remove the other various loopholes that massive environment-exploiting companies use to make money at the expense of people's health. Then, there wouldn't regulations, and coal would still be expensive.
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    For all our focus on the indirect costs in coal, there seems to be willful ignorance about the environmental impact of Chinese solar panels. Sure, you can get solar panels from countries with more environmental oversight but that's going to impact the payoff curve. It's a shame that the focus is on conservation - energy abundance is better for humanity.
    - thaumaturgy 9y ago
      Human civilization has always made concessions in the name of progress, and as we've progressed, the concessions we're willing to make have changed. There certainly are environmental (and human) costs associated with producing electricity from solar energy, but the costs between that and coal production and combustion are not exactly the same. I hope there will be a day when the production of conventional PV will be a concession we're no longer willing to make because something even better has been developed. In the meantime, in a discussion about the socialized costs of coal and whether that's being fairly factored into arguments about its price, I think "but solar..." is a bit of a red herring. Relevant, but only barely.

hpcjoe 9y ago

Coal was viable as a fuel until a few years ago. Then the environmental regulations hit full force, and forced many of these companies under. I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but worth repeating. Decisions have consequences. Deciding that you will enforce a particular tax/regulation policy based upon perceived (real or otherwise) environmental harm means that the people who depend upon those industries for their livelihood, are going to suffer. Coal is still cheaper (pre-regulations to kill the industry). Fracking is a response to a) offshore drilling restriction regs and b) OPEC raising its cost per barrel to the point where it becomes economically viable. Coal is even better, albeit a dirtier fuel, from a cost perspective. But it has been regulated into economic impracticality, by the previous administration. OPEC tried to kill fracking, after their proxies in the US failed to get it turned off, by driving the price per barrel down to levels where it was economically infeasible to use fracking. However, they didn't count on technological development and newer field discoveries. Which actually enabled fracking to reduce the crossover to profitability point below where OPEC was aiming. While this was happening, we all enjoyed the benefit of competition and lower prices for fuel. OPEC has since cried UNCLE and has given up this direction. The point for coal being, that, had the regulations not been enacted, much of what is discussed in this story would not be the case. But they were enacted, because some people felt that their connection to the environment was far more important than other peoples livelihood. Yes, it really is that simple. While I'd love to see us transition to cleaner tech over time, I recognize that there is economic momentum in existing energy tech. Losing this economic momentum means that we consign a non-negligible fraction of our neighbors to effectively an economic dustbin. The rust belt was a prototype for this from an economic view ... it became less expensive to manufacture out of country, so we did. Manufacturing naturally flows to the lowest cost areas, to maximize profits and margins. Manufacturing employs large swaths of people who learn niche jobs, and aren't mobile to find new jobs, when old ones go away. Generally speaking, you can't fight economics. You can distort it with regulations and taxes. But it will eventually settle on an equilibrium. And karma is, as it were ... painful ...

thaumaturgy 9y ago
I think you're making a lot of good points here, but: > Coal is still cheaper... This is only true when you socialize the long-term costs incurred by coal. Regulation is an attempt to push some of those costs back onto the companies that incur them, and then it turns out that coal isn't so cheap after all. I suppose that since "regulation" is becoming a dirty word in politics, and especially with the influence from fringe libertarians, we could instead provide government-funded lawyers to sue any coal-producing company on behalf of any individual or community that can provide any evidence that coal production harmed them in some way. We could set up expedited courts for it and allow any coal-producing company to be litigated against even if they weren't directly responsible for the injury, and remove the other various loopholes that massive environment-exploiting companies use to make money at the expense of people's health. Then, there wouldn't regulations, and coal would still be expensive.
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  For all our focus on the indirect costs in coal, there seems to be willful ignorance about the environmental impact of Chinese solar panels. Sure, you can get solar panels from countries with more environmental oversight but that's going to impact the payoff curve. It's a shame that the focus is on conservation - energy abundance is better for humanity.
  - thaumaturgy 9y ago
    Human civilization has always made concessions in the name of progress, and as we've progressed, the concessions we're willing to make have changed. There certainly are environmental (and human) costs associated with producing electricity from solar energy, but the costs between that and coal production and combustion are not exactly the same. I hope there will be a day when the production of conventional PV will be a concession we're no longer willing to make because something even better has been developed. In the meantime, in a discussion about the socialized costs of coal and whether that's being fairly factored into arguments about its price, I think "but solar..." is a bit of a red herring. Relevant, but only barely.