[kelnos]

> We can stop burning coal.

This illustrates that a big part of the problem is political, not economic or technological.

We have the technology and money to get to nearly 100% renewables (we'd likely keep some non-renewable fallbacks in place) in a fairly short time... hell, we could be there already.

But the coal industry is a powerful political lobby -- both the executives and workers who don't want to lose their jobs -- and so coal sticks around.

[slashdev]

Coal is dying fast in the US. It’s international coal use (India and China) that is the problem. The coal lobby has nothing to do with that.

[teachrdan]

The US coal lobby is fighting for more domestic infrastructure for shipping coal internationally. That would lower the price of coal, thus increasing demand and consumption.

https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/03/6-year-battle-over-propos...

[fbdab103]

Stupid me, I assumed coal was so cheap and globally abundant that shipping it internationally would not make sense.

[slashdev]

Shipping is just surprisingly cheap.

[acchow]

Especially out of the US, since containers are mostly empty

[slashdev]

After fucking over Canada on the Keystone XL pipeline, I hope the Biden administration sticks to their “principles” and shuts that down too. It will be interesting to see.