Killing an industry????? Where was the outcry in the 1980's when Reagan said in a nationally broadcast speech that "..... we're going to change our economy from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy." and the race to move many different industries offshore started - and it continues to this day. What about those millions of jobs??? Who cried for those workers ....... who were told they'd have to re-train for other jobs??? I watched all that happen ..... as it happened. Please don't try to say it's not so. Screwed by one's own party is still screwed. Dems do wrong things too, so it's not a partisan attack. Whichever side puts the screws to American workers is not for most Americans.
As for coal's future - even China is moving away from it. It's simply too damn dirty of a fuel. Every country knows it, and they're moving to cleaner energy sources. Solar and wind can't make up the entire sources for power - this is the industry I've spent 42 years working in - electricity generation, distribution, and control. So I realize that fact. Smaller nuclear power plants that can be / will be site specific, will be the cleanest, zero-carbon-output sources of power going forward. For any of us who have kids & grandkids, I would think that finding cleaner, non-polluting sources of energy is a good thing. Any cleaner sources that cut the amount of greenhouse gases puked into our shared biosphere ought to be welcomed, IMO - just so we don't pass on a toxic, crapped-up world to our heirs. How is cutting back on dirty, polluting energy sources bad???
Lots of good jobs will be / have been created in "greener" technologies. Re-train - as others have been told in past years. BTW - many companies are moving away from dirty energy sources because they can see the future, and it's not with dirty fuels. They didn't make those moves because the government told them to. Investor dollars in those companies voted for a cleaner future in many cases. They looked at what their kids & grandkids might face down the road.
