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Comment by notgood | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, the new US president plans to create jobs with "clean coal"[0] (in a contest of oxymorons that one would win) and also "relax" environmental restrictions choosing Myron Ebell, a climate change denier as the head of EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) [1]

But it's the democratically elected president, so we must only watch as he destroys the world for at least 4 years for the sake of new jobs; we all know there is nothing more important for our future than creating jobs.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/energy-environme...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

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The current US President pushed clean coal too: https://www.grist.org/climate-energy/how-obama-went-from-coa... (until he didn't). During the third debate against Romney they fought over who could be more pro coal.

The clean coal issue is bigger than one person. Coal isn't just an energy source, it's a way of life for a significant chunk of the country. Not just jobs, but something the whole economic infrastructure is built around. Appalachia without coal is Silicon Valley without computers.

That's true about Appalachia, and it's gonna need to change.

That's true, but sort of misses the point. Most regions have a dominant industry, and these industries change over time. Silicon Valley, to take your example, used to produce actual silicon devices. Los Angeles used to be a major petroleum exporter. Those jobs left, but no one cared.

People argue over "appalachia" and make false promises about coal (coal is dying whether anyone wants it or not -- other sources are simply cheaper now) because it workers a swing demographic in presidential elections.

People shouldn't make false promises about industries that are not (and should not) come back. My point is that there is a huge incentive to do so, and Trump doing it isn't some dramatic change from what's come before.

Let me guess, you also think that putting a global warming denier as the head of EPA is also not a "dramatic change"?

Indeed before Silicon Valley they used to grow apricots in huge orchards in Santa Clara Valley. [0][1]

[0] http://www.siliconvalleyhistorical.org/ [1] https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54c17ee8e4b0fe251ef64...

That's the artifact of electoral college. It is frustrating that the whole country policy is dictated by several thousand votes in couple swing states.

> That's the artifact of electoral college.

"Artifact" implies that this is an unexpected, or unwanted result—a bug, if you will.

But the inability of just a few big states to dictate national policy to everyone is the entire purpose of the electoral college. It's entire existence is to produce this "artifact".

For example, Clinton is winning the popular vote—in California, by ~3 million votes. If you exclude CA and instead look at the other 49 states (plus DC), Trump is winning the popular vote by around 1 million people (and the electoral college, too—CA or not).

That's just one reason we don't have a popular vote for the presidency: one state can absolutely dominate the rest of the country—effectively making their votes irrelevant.

I live and vote in CA, so while it would make my vote for president a lot more valuable to do away with the electoral college, I'd much rather let everyone else have a say, too, and keep the Republic intact—even if occasionally other states don't vote the way I'd like.

Other states' votes aren't irrelevant without an electoral college. They're just directly proportional to their population. Why is it fair to make Californians' votes worth less than those of residents of other states, just because more people happen to live inside its borders?

Perhaps we should subdivide California into hundreds of "states" to give its citizens more voting power.

"Clean coal" isn't an oxymoron. Coal has (once sourced and delivered to a power plant ready to burn) two huge problems, one of which the stack of technologies known as "clean coal" does largely resolve:

1. Coal burning power plants produce particulate pollution that directly impacts human health. Modern coal plants pre-treat fuel to minimize pollutants and filter output to remove them from their emissions. The stack of technologies that does this is most of what the industry is referring to when they talk about "clean coal", and it does appear to work.

2. Burning coal releases large amounts of CO2 and contributes to global warming --- about a quarter of the US carbon footprint comes from coal. Supporters of "clean coal" allude to carbon capture and sequestration technology, but it's unclear how effective it is and unclear how widely deployed it will be.

My understanding is that it's reasonable to be skeptical of clean coal as an answer to (2), but not as much for (1). Problem (1) is enormously important: hundreds of people die every year because of PM10 pollution from dirty coal plants. So it's probably best not to adopt the rhetoric that "clean coal" is somehow fake.

> once sourced and delivered to a power plant ready to burn

This is the reason "clean coal" is an oxymoron - burn it as clean as you want, but enormous environmental damage has already been done to get it out of the ground.

No, it's a reason why "clean coal" doesn't fully address the environmental problems of coal. Perhaps you'd prefer the (unassailable) term "cleaner coal".

If "clean coal" is the right term for coal that is not as toxic in one of the steps of using it, then we may call "good hitman" to the ones who don't kill children nor woman; or we may call "positive genocide" the massive killing of only convicted criminals.

My grandfather remembers 'clean coal' being pushed in Scotland 70 years ago. Basically they washed the coal with vast amounts of water. Then at night they pumped the very dirty water into local streams.

Methods change, path stays the same.

Hundreds of peoples lives are saved from PM10 toxicity, &c &c.

Would have saved a lot more if they had never use coal tho.

"Creating jobs" was his mantra, because he says whatever people need to hear to give him what he wants.

I'm afraid Trump might be a relatively sucessful psychopath* whose primary goal is taking delight in crushing personal enemies ("losers").

*in the clinical sense

It would be great if it was just Trump, but basically all the sensible enviromental moves made by America in the last decade or so have been done in such a way that they bypass any Republican controlled body.

Things that the corporations, cities, states or President can do without needing Republican buy in have progressed, everything else has been stalled and killed.

Trump's coal nonsense is a symptom, not a cause.

> we all know there is nothing more important for our future than creating jobs.

I know you're being sarcastic, but it probably is. With a huge and growing percentage of the populace feeling left behind (no/bad jobs, no recession recovery, no hope), be happy that's all that happened so far is Trump was elected. Trumps rhetoric was all snake-oil (coal is not coming back b/c of nat gas, factories are automated, etc...), but the problems he, and Bernie for that matter, touched on are much bigger issues in the short term than climate change.

That's the whole issue though, isn't it? That he prioritizes short term policies over any long term thinking?

If we get to the point where climate change is a short term issue, we've already lost unless by that point we're advanced enough to colonize other planets.

No. There is no point where colonizing other planets is easier than fixing this one.

For people who lost their jobs because of moving production to China and illegal immigrants going to Mars is not really important issue. It is not going to return any profits in their lifetime.

I hope Trump works effectively on the issue of fading working class employment in America. He's been busily appointing billionaires(not 1 billion, plural billion!) to his cabinet. I think this shows what his policy focuses will be. Let's hope in 4 years I am proved totally wrong!

As the world heads to the future, America heads for the early 1900s.

China will become the leaders of the world by default.

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