With climate change looming, it seems so completely backwards to go back to using it again.

Is it coal miners pushing to keep their jobs? Fear of nuclear power? Is purely politically motivated, or are there genuinely people who believe coal is clean?

Edit, I will admit I was ignorant to the usage of coal nowadays.

Now I’m more depressed than when I posted this

  • intensely_human@lemm.ee
    0·
    1 year ago

    There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:

    • people need energy and coal is a source of energy
    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      And they’re going for coal in some places because the political situation has made other reliable energy sources unavailable:

      • the Russia-Ukraine war has destroyed natural gas supply lines to Europe
      • anti-nuclear activism has resulted in lack of nuclear investment

      Outside of coal, nuclear, and natural gas, there aren’t many options for reliable sources of electricity.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        the Russia-Ukraine war has destroyed natural gas supply lines to Europe.

        Didn’t the US bomb them, tried to blame Russia at first, and are now trying to blame Ukraine? With friends like that, who needs enemies?

        The big problem with nuclear is scalability and infrastructure. The power plants take long to construct and require huge investment. Even if that’s solved and the whole world goes nuclear tomorrow, there’s huge doubts about there even being enough easily minable Uranium. Honestly solar and wind should be the way to go, but then there’s the intermittency issue. Which is an issue fossil fuels don’t have. At this point degrowth is desperately needed to avert the worst effects of global warming.