Original point of the thread was whether or not we should be concerned with the job losses associated with the end of the coal industry, and whether or not it's worth protecting them while we can.

Secondarily, people brought up the fact that whether or not coal is dying or should die because it's bad for the environment, we actually rely on coal for a large chunk of our energy needs, and if we stop mining coal, we'll have to replace it with something. The alternatives all have their own drawbacks. Natural gas and nuclear power come with their own environmental problems, and renewable sources don't appear capable of filling the gap yet.

My father paid for my Ivy League education with money that he made designing coal burning power plants.
He was supposedly an expert in the field.
But even he had no idea how much available natural gas existed.
His last 3 power plants have all been converted and are all burning natural gas.

No one is to blame.
The future is uncertain.
Industries and individuals have to adapt.

I am not necessarily against welfare or government subsidies.

But if Solar power was a bad bet, why on earth would we believe that another round of government support for coal will do better?

Thanks, I was mainly giving ironmayb shit for trolling

Maybe I've been drinking. Don't know how I got you mixed up with windywave. Maybe you both sound drunk.

Out of all the places where we are losing jobs, why the focus on coal?

Votes.

And not just coal industry worker votes. It's symbolic for a lot of people.

Krugman just covered this:

https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/03/01/coal-is-a-state-of-mind/?_r=0


Two things that I think he missed: mining is a man's job. Two, mining doesn't require education. So the nostalgia for coal is, in part, for the days when an uneducated dude could make a decent living. Trump wouldn't last five minutes in a coal mine.

Tourism is booming in my town.

Votes.

And not just coal industry worker votes. It's symbolic for a lot of people.

j

That answer was already provided in the first thread. It's part of why a second thread about "who cares" was started

Your n=1 is irrelevant. And likely untrue.

https://www.google.ca/...avel/%3Fsource%3Ddam

So that answer was so sufficient that another thread had to be started to arrive in the same place?

That answer was already provided in the first thread. It's part of why a second thread about "who cares" was started

Not really....actually not at all.

I didn't read most of the posts in that thread, so if there was a really good answer in there, I may have missed it.

I started the new thread because I thought my point about the almost insignificant size of the coal industry would have been lost in that thread (rightly or wrongly).[/quote

Fair enough

I made the point that coal and rust jobs may be insignificant

Unless you are trying to win a national election

I would make it again to you as I know you we touched on the electoral college

I would also challenge you re: the confident position you took about how the 2 parties view and are viewed by labor/unions. I think you are still right about unionized labor but not labor as a whole. It is another area of concern or should be for Ds

Thanks

I sure am. Consider that Trump is promoting a dinosaur while China has already committed a 360 billion dollar budget (almost three times their annual military budget) for renewable energy research/development by 2020. What is your president contributing towards this? Guess who could likely surpass the the USA in clean energy technology in the near future.

https://www.nytimes.com/...investment.html?_r=0

I would also challenge you re: the confident position you took about how the 2 parties view and are viewed by labor/unions. I think you are still right about unionized labor but not labor as a whole. It is another area of concern or should be for Ds

Are you suggesting the the Rs are more pro labor than I think? Or that the Ds are less pro labor?