How about the jobs? I would like reducing coal mining to be high on the priority list but wouldn't want a lone billionaire deciding to shut down a bunch of jobs in my area.
[1] https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/coa...
Please show me the total emissions of US coal, stacked up against global emissions, and then China's emissions and their emissions growth (ideally with a break-out on their coal emissions expansion, which is ongoing).
China added a hundred new coal plants in 2022 alone. That's half as many coal plants in the US, added in just a single year. And they're still going. Those are new plants, they no doubt plan to operate them for decades.
What do you think about China adding 500 new coal plants over the next ten years?
US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.
You're absolutely right that it's a super big and super hard problem. But we can't just throw our hands up. Even if you're not on board with helping, I beg you to please not stand in the way (or vote for those who stand in the way) of those of us who care about fixing this problem.
Edit: Oh, failed to address this:
> US coal is not going to make a difference whether it continues or not.
It absolutely will! The US is responsible for about 15% of worldwide carbon emissions[1]. Of that, about 25%[2] is from electricity generation. Of that, about 80% comes from coal and natural gas. 15 * .25 * .80 = about 1.8% of global emissions comes from US coal & natural gas power plants alone. Two percent of global emissions is quite a huge amount! It'd be one nice, big step forward on the long, long (long) road to fixing this problem. You gotta do something, or else you're doing nothing, and coal plants are a great target to aim at.
[1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss...
[2] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
1: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-...
sure, here you are: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#co2-emissions-by-re....
Turns out China emits around half the CO2 per capita that the US does, and the total hasn't grown in the last decade.
The total amount of power generated from coal in China also hasn't grown in more than 10 years. And the coal they do have has become cleaner, so the carbon emissions just due to that have gone down slightly.
'But China's growth is cancelling out all our potential cuts' was a technically true, but still venal and dangerously misguided excuse 15 years (and 0.25C) ago when it was first invented. Now it isn't even technically true.