Really? How many St. Louis homes have been heated with coal in the last 50-60 years? The switch to oil burning furnaces or natural gas or electricity occurred long before climate change became an issue. And even the pro-AGW climate scientists agree that the change in the USA came more from market forces than anything the government has done.
Most of the world's electricity generation is via coal at about 40%. The rest is mostly from oil, natural gas, nuclear, and hydro with wind and solar still at the bottom at less than 1% worldwide. The USA now uses slightly more natural gas than coal for electricity generation but in both cases the percentage is in the low 30 percentile.
Few if any homes are heated with coal in St Louis any longer. The one I live in was heated with fuel oil 15 years ago. Even that was unbelievably dirty by modern standards.
To my point on heating with coal. The story of the trouble making people switch to cleaner coal in the 1930's is an example of something ridiculously easy and obvious the government had to make people do at the risk of riots.
Back to your point, market forces are slowly killing coal in America independent of government regulations I agree. Emissions regulations do not help coal but whatever nostalgia people have for wanting to go back to well off Coal miners were in Butcher's Hollow in the 1930's is misplaced.
What can we debate....I don't want to just plum shut down every coal plant in America. I'm also not enough of an expert to really engage in a conversation about coal plant emissions controls. In general I find electricity humorously cheap and if anyone asked me to vote yes on a bill which would add 5% to the cost of producing energy with coal by means of emissions control additions I would.
Try living on a small fixed income and see how you feel about adding 5% to that electric bill, most especially if it is for reasons that benefit pretty much nobody. Certainly where natural gas is cheaper, electric plants will use natural gas.
But if the USA cannot use all the coal produced, there are many other countries that need it.
It is nice of you to be so concerned about the poor. There is a socialized healthcare thread someplace I'll link ya to where you can support someone's drive for subsidies for insurance for the poor.
I would counter even if 100% of your electricity comes from coal $20 a month in mid winter and mid summer being added on is not the big deal. It is what is wrong with their situation.
I'm not sure what you are getting at with coal production...if Chad can produce coal and use it bless them. Sneak them the designes for the most cost effective / cleanest plant they can build.....and build them a railroad to feed it with I suppose. I don't hate the poor. I just don't think really poor countries have the infrastructure needed to support coal plants.
The USA hasn't always had the infrastructure to support much of anything either, but by exploiting our own natural resources we became the No. 1 economic power of the world with one of the highest standards of living.
Evenso states such as Hawaii have no natural power sources except for a small amount of thermal, wind, and solar, so they have to import the coal and petroleum they use as their primary source of energy. Their electric costs are therefore the highest in the country, but they have electricity. Alaska does fine because, though they have about half the nation's coal reserves, oil and natural gas are also abundant there and provide over 95% of their energy needs. And our extensive power grid takes care of all the rest of us in the contiguous 48.
Poor countries should be encouraged to adopt personal liberty, free markets, and respect human rights so that they too can prosper.
And that is why we need to be sure this whole combat climate change stuff is honest and useful because it could deny poor countries the ability to prosper as those pushing that program already have.
Perhaps if we can get rid of the rhetoric of the yellers on both sides we can find agreement.
Pretty much I don't mind holding the U.S. to a higher standard than the rest of the world. I don't want my city's air to become as dirty as Beijing's just to lower my electric bills. From history I firmly believe it would if we remove regulations.
Also, we can afford it. If anyone in Chad can build a Coal power plant and the infrastructure needed to support it, bless them! If the Paris accords or my own accords provide a tax break to U.S. companies who sell at cost or give them equipment which met our standards of 30 years ago, great.
Cheaply selling or giving away even our obsolete technology will make 3rd world countries more capable of competing first with manufacturing then militarily but if we don't, eventually the Chinese or the French will and I'd like to think we would get some return on the good will.
I am all for good will and I definitely believe in giving stuff away that we don't need and somebody else can get some good and beneficial use out of.
But this isn't really about charity. It is a about allowing people who are determined to improve their own circumstances the liberty/ability to use the resources they have to do that.
If an Indian reservation for example, decided to build a coal plant and exploit its own coal reserves to empower or improve the status of its own people, I sure wouldn't want UNNECESSARY law/rules/regs to prevent them from doing that.