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To some extent the miner is the vanguard of your ability to discuss this on the internet. We can't run the grid on lumber or "energy crops," and all the other o

To some extent the miner is the vanguard of your ability to discuss this on the internet. We can't run the grid on lumber or "energy crops," and all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. There's an advanced energy ecosystem that keeps a lot of really subtle and important things running as the human ecosystem evolves. Maybe at some point coal mining does get phased out in favor of less energy and cleaner energy, but you're gambling on that miner's tonnage not being necessary to clear that gap. A society could also say, "No, coal stops tomorrow," but a lot of places tried "Everyone's a farmer tomorrow" in the 20th century for very similar reasons and hundreds of millions of people starved to death. That coal miner isn't only feeding his family, that miner feeds and warms probably thousands of people. To phase out his job, you need a willful change in the infrastructure of the places he serves: you would need everyone to live somewhere without heating, to give up some amount of electricity use, and to begin food production independent of energy (which is a lark, if you've ever tried to grow a crop it is not easy, especially without Haber process or crop defense agents).

5DFractalTetris 8y ago
To elaborate a bit: before the Haber process there were 1 billion people, and they were shipping bat guano from Chile to Europe to prevent hunger. After the Haber process, the population went from 1 billion to 7 billion in less than 100 years, but everyone was in preexisting cities which required heating and stuff. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are unsavory but they can't be halted without catastrophic repercussions, people freezing and going hungry and unemployed. A world which works without those technologies is not a feasible option for most people, in much the same way as the population explosion almost eradicated subsistence living. I think the most important thing about the Luddites is they're a reminder that a certain portion of the population in an industrial revolution sees the fruits of the new technologies, but is also experiencing a literally-unbearable negative impact from those same technologies. Which society holds the other hostage is a matter of perspective entirely.
nitrogen 8y ago
...all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. You're going to have to back up that claim with some very strong evidence.
- 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
  Follow the process chains for manufacturing all of these technologies from their constituent ores, transporting them to a suitable location, and constructing the end product of a power plant connected to a durable energy infrastructure. It cannot be done without ore tailings, a preexisting grid (which will decay and will need periodic regeneration), though maybe it can be done without fossil fuels. I still think the coal phase-out is going to take another 50 years. I'd be surprised if burning stopped completely in my lifetime. Generally speaking, we eat stuff to gain energy and stay alive, and process it into byproducts. Since we need heat and cooking and transit, we end up eating uranium and coal as much as food. As far as the environmental impacts of the energy economy are concerned, I'd like to think that the worst of it was noticed and mitigated when the EPA was formed. Lots of the numbers about one form of energy versus another and the cost-benefit analyses are (as my argument was for you) way too much conjecture than I can be comfortable with.
  - all_blue_chucks 8y ago
    Arguing that things use resources does not support your claim that they use the same resources.
    - 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
      That may be true, but due to a number of scientific conclusions in the 20th century (the uncertainty principle & the incompleteness theorems), I've concluded that all knowledge is at best heuristic, and that claims to the contrary are a form of violence. I'm prepared to claim "all these use resources" but am not prepared to claim "some technologies use certain resources in a way that offer environmental benefit over other technologies, which use different resources." That seems unfair and/or dangerous.

5DFractalTetris 8y ago

To elaborate a bit: before the Haber process there were 1 billion people, and they were shipping bat guano from Chile to Europe to prevent hunger. After the Haber process, the population went from 1 billion to 7 billion in less than 100 years, but everyone was in preexisting cities which required heating and stuff. Fossil fuels and nuclear power are unsavory but they can't be halted without catastrophic repercussions, people freezing and going hungry and unemployed. A world which works without those technologies is not a feasible option for most people, in much the same way as the population explosion almost eradicated subsistence living. I think the most important thing about the Luddites is they're a reminder that a certain portion of the population in an industrial revolution sees the fruits of the new technologies, but is also experiencing a literally-unbearable negative impact from those same technologies. Which society holds the other hostage is a matter of perspective entirely.

nitrogen 8y ago

...all the other options (solar, wind, fracking, hydroelectric, geothermal) have very similar environmental impacts to coal energy. You're going to have to back up that claim with some very strong evidence.

5DFractalTetris 8y ago
Follow the process chains for manufacturing all of these technologies from their constituent ores, transporting them to a suitable location, and constructing the end product of a power plant connected to a durable energy infrastructure. It cannot be done without ore tailings, a preexisting grid (which will decay and will need periodic regeneration), though maybe it can be done without fossil fuels. I still think the coal phase-out is going to take another 50 years. I'd be surprised if burning stopped completely in my lifetime. Generally speaking, we eat stuff to gain energy and stay alive, and process it into byproducts. Since we need heat and cooking and transit, we end up eating uranium and coal as much as food. As far as the environmental impacts of the energy economy are concerned, I'd like to think that the worst of it was noticed and mitigated when the EPA was formed. Lots of the numbers about one form of energy versus another and the cost-benefit analyses are (as my argument was for you) way too much conjecture than I can be comfortable with.
- all_blue_chucks 8y ago
  Arguing that things use resources does not support your claim that they use the same resources.
  - 5DFractalTetris 8y ago
    That may be true, but due to a number of scientific conclusions in the 20th century (the uncertainty principle & the incompleteness theorems), I've concluded that all knowledge is at best heuristic, and that claims to the contrary are a form of violence. I'm prepared to claim "all these use resources" but am not prepared to claim "some technologies use certain resources in a way that offer environmental benefit over other technologies, which use different resources." That seems unfair and/or dangerous.