The coal industry is declining anyway. According to the Washington Post, Arby's has more employees than the whole US coal industry (around 77,000 workers). It'd be easier than you'd expect to completely eliminate the coal industry if the whole country chose to do so (although I'm not saying it's a trivial issue by any means) and transition workers in the coal industry to other things. The issue really is just creating new jobs and expanding the renewable energy market, but I feel that coud be done by policies like a carbon tax that increases over the years, more subsidies to renewable energy, and drastically cutting subsidies to companies like ExxonMobil (whose subsidies are huge). Of course, there are complications with everything...EastStroudsburg13 wrote:It depends who we're talking about. A lot of European countries are much more restrictive than us and are laughing at us because we're lax, and not the other way around (check out the international coverage of the US pulling out of the Paris Agreement). It's my belief that the US should be leading by example, and not depending on China to dictate what we're doing. China doing the right thing or not should not affect how we as a country act, even if their emissions are greater.CrayolaCrayon wrote:
If anyone should cut carbon emissions, it's China. The USA's emissions are rather small compared to China. If China isn't doing anything to stop their emissions, why should the US? Other countries are essentially laughing at us because we're throwing ourselves under the bus. I believe there is a way to approach this problem without the expansion of government control. They should incentivize, but not restrict. There are millions of people that rely on the coal industry to care for their families;there has to be a better way.
Under Cafe standards, most of our cars could probably be squashed into a cube because they don't really have that much metal if any anymore.
I can see where you're coming from, however.
As for the coal industry, those people need to adapt to a changing world and changing needs. It's an unfortunate situation, and given that East Stroudsburg is close to a lot of coal towns, I've been through quite a few of them, but we shouldn't be bending over backwards to prop up a declining industry. There's every opportunity for coal workers to transition into wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, what have you. I'm not calling for the complete elimination of coal, but as they say, "time is undefeated".
Also, the US has been behind in climate technologies this decade. China has been heavily investing in renewable resources. Germany and China are leading the world in photovoltaics (solar energy). Iceland is powered mostly by geothermal energy (exploiting its geography) and plans to transition to totally fossil-fuel-free. The US needs to step up its game, regardless of how it's done.
