Eliminating our dependency on coal is a necessary but not sufficient condition in solving climate change issues. It's silly to suggest we shouldn't take a necessary step because it's not sufficient on it own.
It’s always framed like there is no cost to eliminating coal.
For techies, no. For rural folk, big time. Techies lack empathy but naturally buy into the “save/change the world” narrative.
Of course there's a cost, but there's a cost to climate change too. The barrier reef is one of those costs. So if you're not paying the cost of reducing climate change, then you can't claim you're looking after the reef.
Australia has very sunny weather plus significant deposits of lithium. They could very well invest in PV + storage technology if they wanted to. Instead they have been actively protectionist of the coal industry.
I'm from the UK, we had our own shutdown of the mines in the 70's, and it's still scarred into the collective psyche of the working class. But it doesn't have to be like that. If the jobs had been replaced and investment had been put into alternative industry then it would be a very different story. That's what should be happening.
Coal is bad enough that we can justify getting rid of it without disingenuous comparisons of decently compensated mining jobs to min-wage sandwich assembly.
Nobody is saying coal is a key aspect of the economy but thanks for the straw-man.
I'm saying you can justify getting rid of coal without borderline lying by comparing the jobs to burger flippers. These are respectable heavy industry jobs that pay respectable salaries and they are a large enough fraction of the economy in a couple states that you can't just hand wave it away as a non-issue. A good point of comparison is the logging/timber industry which employs similar numbers and is also geographically concentrated. We need to be honest about the fact that there will be regional economies that are hurt badly if we artificially get rid of coal faster than the market forces are doing.
The comparison is useful to demonstrate how small the industry is. No one thinks the loss of Arby’s would collapse the economy, but politicians act like coal would.
Arbys does not underpin the economy of west virginia or any other state. If it did underpin a state economy you can bet your ass they'd fight for it and politicians looking to curry favor with those politicians would also fight for it.