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The coal industry is, over the next decade, going to go the way of Venezuela, and the parts of America still dependent on it economically will go with it. We a
by rossdavidh 7y ago
The coal industry is, over the next decade, going to go the way of Venezuela, and the parts of America still dependent on it economically will go with it. We are not ready.
- CydeWeys 7y agoIt feels like it's already mostly gone this way; the vast majority of the coal-associated jobs (those involved in mining) are already gone. Automation plus large closures already gutted the industry.
- JauntTrooper 7y agoYeah. There are only ~80,000 coal miners in the US now, which is 0.06% of the full-time employee population.
- tasty_freeze 7y agoAccording to wikipedia [1], the figure is 50,000. The peak headcount was 883,000, but due to mechanization, those 50,000 way out-produce those 883,000. Looking at the graph on that page, coal production is down but is still higher than what it was 50 years ago. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_Stat...
- rkimmel 7y agoI’m ready to breathe clean air though.
- isostatic 7y ago> the parts of America still dependent on it economically will go with it. We are not ready. And you'll never be. You didn't learn from the lessons in the UK of the 60s through 80s when output dropped dramatically. It's taken decades of EU investment for places like the Welsh valleys to begin to recover.
- adrianN 7y agoTime to retrain the coal workers to build wind turbines instead. We'll need a lot of those in the next ten to twenty years.
- StavrosK 7y agoBetter yet, nuclear plants.
- adrianN 7y agoIf you look at how long it takes to build a nuclear plant and compare it to the carbon budget we have left you'll find out that you can't build enough nuclear plants in the remaining time.
- StavrosK 7y agoThat's assuming we won't get better at building them. Also, wind/solar have terrible energy density and are very bursty, so it sounds like we're screwed.
- pfdietz 7y agoGiven the history of the industry, that's a good assumption. Solar and wind are cheap and are getting cheaper, which will make up for a lot of intermittency. If you want a career in energy, look into ways to exploit intermittent cheap sources. There's free money waiting to be picked up if you can do that.
- wahern 7y agoAmericans are just slow. The Japanese and South Koreans can build nuclear plants in a jiffy: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-second-fastest-nuclear-plant-building-country https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/2027347/south-korea-s... Maybe that's why Toshiba thought it was a good idea to buy Westinghouse; that they could better manage American mega projects.
- godtoldmetodoit 7y agoArby's already employs more then the coal industry. Coal is already dead, and they are already dealing with it (poorly).
- thinkcontext 7y agoThere are going to be big bills to the taxpayer. Pensions, retiree health care, site cleanup, etc. The Black Lung Fund which operates off of a coal tax already has a ballooning deficit, we're going to be paying for those people for decades.
- perfunctory 7y agoComparing industries to countries is absurd. What do you even mean by that?