It's not revenge, it's just good policy. It will be vastly cheaper for the US if we pay these industries to shut down and replace them with renewables. We could pay every person working at a fossil fuel job their full wage to do absolutely nothing until they die and still come out ahead. Climate change isn't a joke, it's going to be really, really, really, really expensive.
That's what we did with the dockworkers when we wanted containerization and it turns out that now every time they want things they say they're striking when in reality half of them haven't worked a day since then because we paid them off.
It's a kneejerk response designed to obviate a political problem. Historically these will be perceived as vengeful and undemocratic.
> it's just good policy.
It's good policy if you only consider _one_ outcome. Good policy is made from compromise. Yours explicitly denies that, to the point where I'm very sure there are _better_ policy choices available to us.
> We could pay every person working at a fossil fuel job their full wage to do absolutely nothing until they die and still come out ahead.
I'd like to see your math on this.
> Climate change isn't a joke
Then shipping manufactured items from China should be a huge concern. If you're not making the replacement equipment in the USA for the USA then you are just ignorantly displacing the problem. To the point where this all begins to look like a modern colonial strategy solving local problems at the expense of global outcomes.
> these will be perceived as vengeful and undemocratic
They're vengeful. I don't think they're undemocratic.
> Good policy is made from compromise
Not always. Sometimes there is a correct answer. For energy costs and political stability, continuing to subsidise coal has turned into a corrupt and expensive mistake.
Fair; however, you do share this country with people who do not explicitly agree with all your decisions. Which is why I flagged this as a /perception/. Those still have actual consequences whether you agree with them or not.
> For energy costs and political stability, there seems to be only one here.
You're ignoring national security and resistance to natural disasters. There's the part of the argument you want to have; unfortunately, it explicitly touches on several other complicated ones. Ignoring them introduces unnecessary peril to your own stated goals.
If climate change is that important then you should really be seeking to rationalize the common concerns surrounding this approach and working to address them through incorporation into your strategy. There's more than one thing to "get right" here.
> you do share this country with people who do not explicitly agree with all your decisions
That doesn’t make a policy democratic. To the extent there is good criticism of my suggestion, it’s in it being disrespectful to the rule of law.
> If climate change is that important
I never mentioned climate change.
Coal is expensive to burn. It creates particulate emissions that are locally hazardous. And it funds political interests that do shit like shut down an 80% complete wind farm or under-construction solar panel.
I’m arguing for acting decisively to moderate energy costs, safeguard our health and remove an increasingly-toxic special interest from the board.
