It's Time To Let Coal Die | Climate Town
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ม.ค. 2023
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Writers: Rollie Williams & Matt Nelsen, with help from Ben Boult & Nicole Conlan
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![Would You Fall for It? [ST08]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n94-_yE4IeU/mqdefault.jpg)
Nodding along to the coal history talk and feeling VERY Appalachian right now...
My great grandfather was a miner and holler preacher in souther KY who died of black lung, my grandmother was born during the Great Depression and spent decades writing about Appalachian issues... especially poverty, black lung, and the company scrip system. She and her sisters were lifelong environmentalists, even though they wouldn't use that word, because of what happened to their father, husbands, and brothers. And they never trusted companies who they felt lied and helped demean Appalachian people to make it easier for city folk to ignore them, which led them to be very pro-Civil Rights in a broader sense, because they saw the connection between their own lives and the lives of others even if the men of their families were only interested in local politics.
Just goes to show that "a product of their time" can actually be a good thing, sometimes.
I’m also from southern KY & this rings SO true. Thank you for sharing.
i'm an aussie who gets into a bitta folk music and history, from here, Ireland, England of course Appalachia (among many other joints). Yous have got some legitimate heroes up in the mountains there, from strikers to organisers. solidarity ay
@@onthewattle Unions screw up everything. Don't glorify communism.
My family saw the writing on the wall and left in the Armco exodus. We got to live near J.D. Vance's family... yay?
Thank you and your family for writing down our history. It’s important that we don’t lose it!
What you wrote got me thinking. I love knowing the real meaning of the word redneck, it’s a beautiful story, but I hate how that word is now associated with being against civil rights. We got that name because we proudly showed our solidarity with black folk. We acknowledged that we are in this fight together. Why are people proudly identifying as a redneck if they won’t do the same? So frustrating
My great grandfather was a coal miner in Central Pennsylvania. He nearly died in a tunnel collapse one otherwise regular morning when he headed into work. Those jobs are so dangerous, and the people putting their safety in jeopardy to keep our lights on are just absolutely disrespected by the coal companies. To hear that they're actively blocking renewable energy projects and retraining in those counties is infuriating!
my great grandfather was a coal miner. Lived until late 80s and raised an amazing family. Many jobs are dangerous, look up job death statistics - danger isn't a viable argument to get rid of entire job markets. Every major energy company is trying to get rid of / block other energy types. It's "big business" at it's worse and again, shouldn't be used as an argument to get rid of an entire job market. Please work on your logic.
@@brandon0981 1. those companies make the danger, because they could do way more to ensure workers safety
2. watch the video to know why blocking renewable energy is bad
3. logically fuck off
@@brandon0981 all the arguments in the video are though
@@brandon0981 coal mining possibly has the worst statistics ever. Not only did it work children to death in the 18th century, all the afflictions mentioned are true. If your grandfather survived until retirement (often retirement meant people just couldn't physically work anymore) he was lucky.
Ask a coal miner if they would prefer to have a job that paid well and wasn't going to kill them.
@@rogerbrand6214 You should ask whether they prefer to have a dangerous job or no job at all. It's not that easy to find a safe well-paying job in society. If there are then it would all go to the young, rich, and educated people in society. They take these dangerous jobs because they have to, not because they want to. We're not living in an idealistic society, most of us have to either work or starve, if you don't then you're lucky. The problem here isn't how bad the job is, the problem here is that there aren't enough jobs to replace it, solve it and you can get rid of it without the workers forming protests against you
turns out, in a blind chicken finding the corn situation, when trump said "clean coal... they take the coal and scrub it clean" it was the most reasonable clean-coal endorsement statement a politician has ever made
You failed the Eye Dee ten tee test.
@@williamevans6522 no, I'm afraid that would be you somehow missing the joke. Unless you're a Trump supporter?
@@williamevans6522 also, you just absolutely murdered the "ID10T" joke. It's meant to be said out loud for a reason. And that reason is that seeing the phrase "eye dee ten tee" spelled out and having to parse it is a fucking antidote for comedy.
@@joshyoung1440 Just trying to move it past the censor algorithm.
@@joshyoung1440 Anyone with brains is for TRUMP
Ah, Manchin being a coal baron explains so much. How come this isn't talked about more. This should be the first thing popping in mind when mentioning his name. Guy is just protecting his own bag, the most predictable reason ever
But because people don't pay attention and the politicians want to keep us intentionally uninformed
He represents an 80% GOP state, and is the pivotal senate seat. Work to make him irrelevant.
This is not talked about because most people believe something is not a story if the NYT, Fox News or MSNBC tell them it's not a story. These corporations are all steered by the same money that politicians are steered with.
feels like he's beenrm around forever too. doesn't even need that bag anymore in all likelihood, guys gotta be set for 3 lives by now
He is not only a Coal Baron? He set up his business based on using a type of coal called GOB or Garbage of Bitumen which release more pollution than normal coal.
My cousin was a small-town girl at heart who wanted that lifestyle for her family, so she moved out of the city to a small town. A small town with no city water utility, only well water. Unfortunately, the town was only about a mile downwind from a big coal power plant. She got pregnant, but had serious complications and miscarried. More miscarriages followed, with serious life-threatening problems. I started to wonder if the coal power plant could be a factor, and did some research. The coal ash and tailings contain a toxic slurry of some of the most dangerous compounds on earth. They sit in ponds, which leech into the water supply.
Sometimes, there's a reason a town is small: most people either left or knew enough to stay away.
Google the Kingston Steam Plant coal ash spill. Literally the largest industrial spill in US history.
Oh, and when they got done scraping it out of the Clinch River, they dumped it in a predominantly Black community in Alabama.
Your power plants have no filters installed?
I have a relative that just can't get pregnant, and the doctors are unable to find anything wrong with her. She lives downwind of a pulp mill. We have wondered if the pulp mill is messing with her body, but there's no way to test that besides asking her to uproot her entire life and move somewhere new.
@@johanneswerner7649 no filter is 100% effective
*CAN WE TAKE A SECOND* to appreciate the astonishing production value of this video
yes! i’ll take a whole minute actually. i think i’m in love
I will take 29 minutes to rewatch it actually
Always great.
@@vagonedorato - When TH-cam was launched I said: "What a stupid idea - who wants to watch other people's home videos...???"
Possibly the most wrong I have ever been on anything.
'petraaa novaaa'
It's amazing how much conflict of interest there is in the US government and that such things are even allowed. It's crazy
It’s amazing watching politicians gaslight the public, it’s ridiculous they can get away with it. Great video as always 💯
fun fact. at 13:16 there is a literal gas light in the background :D
shieeeeeeeet
It was crazy when WV's top coal miners union came out in favor of Build Back Better and Manchin still tanked it. Coal miners want reliable employment in a burgeoning industry and the federal government needs to play a role in retraining them to work in renewables.
Here's hoping they come out in force in 2024 and somehow elect someone who isn't an obviously corrupt coal shill. I don't expect a Democrat to win in WV after Manchin though, the state is far too red and has been hemorrhaging its youth with its lack of local opportunities (and no Republican would ever work with a Democrat at this point, nor will ever support something even mildly beneficial to workers).
It's crazy what we could do if our elected leaders actually did the job we pay them to do and actually represent our interests, not the interests of money and the fucking markets.
Rotating villain
Manchin will hopefully go down in history as the guy who tried to stop climate action and broader social policy progress in the US. How likely do you think this is? I would like to think this will happen. Also, just out of curiosity, do other countries have Joe Manchin-like figures in politics who stalled policies to address climate change, and were they overcome? Case studies like this might help us.
@@wyatttomlinson3475 man made climate change is bs
Just yesterday I was thinking “I haven’t heard from Rollie the climate nerd in a while” and now here we are! I feel like I manifested this video, lol
Thank you for doing so. I appreciate all the work you put into bringing me this video.
me too
And we thank you for this.
I have a few channels I'd like you to ponder, if you don't mind
Same!
I live in Newcastle Australia. A huge coal exporter. Thankful that we have politicians trying to transition while helping people into new jobs. But it's so frustrating that this is still a " future plan" not a history lesson.
Thanks for the great content!
aus needs nuclear
@@wade2bosh no one needs nuclear. It's incredibly expensive and pointless
Your video's are terrible for my blood pressure. The more I watch them the more angry and depressed I get. :) Great job!
Coal is one of those things.. you can see why it had a reason to be, but you just don't understand why anyone would WANT it to stay around.
Same with capitalism...
We live in a society where money literally equals power. The reason for every shitty thing is the same. Someone is making money off of it and there is more money in the short term in keeping things as they are than there is in changing things.
@@GTAVictor9128 capitalism isnt that bad if you know what problem it solves (what needs to be produced). how the system is set up it pretty important though. I definetly dont like the way america does is for example but like denmark/sweden have pretty decent capitalistic systems.
Even if we get rid of coal power plants, we will still need coal for making metal and other materials.
@@ethanwhitehead2085 that's a niche use though. Coal for generating power is so last century
Speaking of the coal miners vs coal barons wars, if I remember correctly, the very first airstrike to be used on US soil was used against coal miners during one of these wars.
*So it happened before the air attack on the black population of Tulsa, OK?*
That was the battle for Blair mountain in West Virginia back in 1921 where they dropped bombs out of planes. This was to try and strikebreak workers trying to unionize. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain
One of the Coal mine owners, Richard Mellon, famously said: "You could not run a coal company without machine guns”
The Tulsa massacre was just a few months prior to this.
@@hulkhatepunybanner Same year 1921, but the Tulsa race riot was in May/June and the battle of Blair Mountain was August/September.
@@Psinite *I wonder if they had to pass a law banning homeland air strikes on civilians.*
@@dylanwinn3 *That sounds like a class action lawsuit for the surviving families of miners.*
My grandfather operated heavy machinery mining coal, and he actually looked forward to the downfall of coal. Granted, he was old enough to retire once he was laid off. He only did the job because it was one of the only jobs he could work near home to feed the family.
So like you mentioned in your video, many coal employees could care-a-less weather or not they have a job in coal, they only care about having a close to home job to keep them going!
Industry analysts are saying that global coal consumption will be an all-time record high this year as countries like Pakistan and Indonesia shift from LNG back to more coal. Would love for climate town to do a piece on the impacts of this troubling trend and possible ways to fix the problem short-term as well as long-term.
Love these videos.
Love that username
No way JREs a fan of climate town? Hell yeah
@jerryrigeverything is a legend!
Yo no way its the guy who rips apart phones and tablets
Fantastic video! We kinda did the exact same stupid thing here in Germany. Right now the the police are brutally clearing a village in order to tear it down and abstract the coal underneath. In 2023.
Judging by the European Union energy crisis I’m not surprised
We wouldn't have this issue if Germany didn't have so many people against nuclear. Shutting down coal and gas and continuing with nuclear as a stop-gap solution until we're able to rely solely on renewables would've been the best way to reduce emissions ASAP.
Germany is even worse: lignite.
@@TheAmericanCatholic no. This is an old contract from around thirty years ago. And just as police are brutally raiding the village of Lützerath, Winds were so high and wind energy was even straining the electrical grid in germanys north so south germany had to save energy because the grid couldn’t habdle it
@@TheAmericanCatholic has nothing to do with that. I am from that Region and that Shit has been going on for decades. The coal miner, RWE, is one of the biggest employers in the state, they Run Most of my hometown. three of Europe's Most polluting coal power plants are around my town. It's been becoming more expensive since the 80s, and it's common knowledge that rwe will leave once the mines are closed. They claim to Invest in renewable Energy, but they only Put Up a few Wind turbines and called it a day. Meanwhile, my town Has Made No effort in 30 years to attract other Industries. Like, 10 years ago they blocked the development of a Business Park because it might Impact "businesses in town". There is No Business in town.
Once the coal mines shut down and rwe inevitably leaves, my town will Go to Shit. You could prepare for that and invest in new Industries. Or you can blame the people trying to protect their Village and use Police brutality against peacful climate activists, calling them agitators. Guess what my hometown is doing :')
This guy is so gifted. A brilliant researcher and presenter in one. His videos should be required viewing for all college students. I’d like to see his take on the unbelievable story of Steven Donziger and Chevron.
dude is wrong half the time though. using strawman arguments as statements when no one is rebutting is easy to do. California hasn't fully switched to renewable energy and has to ask people not to charge their cars at certain dates already.
Better yet, make them required viewing in China.
The upbeat comedy perfectly offsets the feeling of impending doom I get from watching these videos 😂
My grandfather was a coal miner. My dad was the only boy of 4 kids. My grandfather didn't want my dad working in the mines. One time my grandfather risked his life to dig out another miner and drag him out. Unfortunately, the other miner didn't make it.
It being dangerous has been know for well since ever
that's what I feel so strange about coal miners in USA.
Many coal miners in other countries worked hard, so they can provide food n education to their kids. The hope was the kids would have enough knowledge not to work in Mines. It's very dangerous to work in Mines.
What I understand is that's not what US miners. Kids would follow parents tradition. Despite what others say, safety in US Mines is toughest compared to other nations. That could be the reason that fathers want their kids to continue to work in Mines.
Your grandfather is the exception.
@@Perroden knowing a job is dangerous is all well and good when you're depednent on it to feed your family
Coal no longer being profitable is the best news I have heard in a long time.
You couldn't possibly drag a corpse around for an entire weekend without anybody noticing.
It only means it now will be propped up with loads of tax money....
@@baronvonlimbourgh1716 Until someone comes along and lets Manchin's voters know that if he ACTUALLY cared about them, he'd let coal die so it can stop slowly killing all of them, anyway.
@@Vaeldarg and then he makes something up about mexicans stealing their jobs or who's saying that is a woke commie and he'll be still there until 2049...
People voting for these people obviously don't care about facts or their own wellbeing, all they care about is that "the others" have it worse then them and they are happy.
It is what conservative politics has been build around for as long as i can remember at least.
Lol it's not dead.
Number one dumper of mercury into the food chain. Also the number one producer of putting radioactive isotopes into the environment.
The graph energy is amazing. I tried to find the data for your employment graph for an hour before giving up and realizing that you compiled data from a ton of sources. Incredible dedication to the craft. Thank you.
Your videos are soo good it hurts. The pain of knowing how screwed we are as a society.
Sorry to.burst ur bubbles,but coal is still a huge proponent of majority of the world's population of 8 billion lives,yes it might be dieing in whatever small pockets of ur little hippie green save the earth communal earthship portlandia let us talk about climate change while I sip my $8 Starbucks latte and eat my daily $12 avocado sandwich from trader Joe's which is draining the water tables in Spain dry and causing droughts and famines suburbia.
At this very moment,there is a 12 year old girl in Indonesia digging out these beautiful nuggets of
Talking about screwed up, the carbon /toxicity footprint of the military industrial complex?
@@lorenzoblum868 cant be worse than the avocado growing footprint and the scientifically engineering soy and corn protein to resemble actual animal protein process. i mean goddam the process cant be simple.....the amount of energy that goes into synthesizing impossible meat molecule by molecule.....its probably as wasteful as cultivating caviar or making
@@lorenzoblum868 Abby Martin from Empire Files is currently making a documentary about just that topic!
@@plato8427 I wish her luck not getting shadowbanned, boycotted... There is an omerta about the elephant in the room. An agreement with IPCC...
"And if you're old enough to remember the beginning of this video..." had me burst out laughing!
Thanks for another great video Rollie, really educational and inspiring!
Got through nod to all the Tiktok kids with the attention spam of a golden fish
I respect that
The part about coal miners being exploited should be taught to everyone
This is a really important video and i hope many people see it
as someone from northeast pennsylvania i appreciate all of the anti coal company stuff in the beginning bc so much of my area has been affected by those terrible companies
Your videos are so good, I always want more!! It's incredible to watch the sociopaths in DC burn billions of dollars on these projects that are destined to fail, but will fight tooth and nail to prevent desperate people from getting _any_ of that money, that could be used for housing, infrastructure, etc.
Because if that money actually went to those things, and proceeded to fix the issue, how would the politicians justify not spending more on similar projects?
Which is ironic as they are currently talking about the debt ceiling
Only rich people deserve to have money. Or that's the GOP platform anyways. Can't give money to poor people, they didn't earn it. Rich people earned it by having rich parents who had parents who called dibs on a forest or emerald mine or something else they didn't make.
Sixteen Tons is an all time favorite of mine. Even used to sing it as a lullaby to my youngest. Had to explain the lyrics to them at 3-4yo. Even now, can bring a tear to their eyes by singing a verse (both memories of youth gone by, and the plight of the miners...as they got older, I explained more and more of the story). Could not be prouder.
And props to Tony Dominic, very nice rendition.
Holy wow, I had very little clue about the mining history in the US.
Great great video, thank you.
i've actually watched Weekend at bernie's, and considering bernie was being puppeted about t otry getting access to money he supposedly had but actually didn't?
It is a genuinely perfect metaphore.
4:26 get ready for people to start claiming that “clean oil/gas” are actually the answer…nope, they’re just as useless as “clean coal.”
The IPCC summary for policy makers does say that using money to make oil/gas/coal production have lower emissions can have a minor effect….but they also mention that devoting that money to wind and solar energy would actually reduce emissions WAY more!
I actually did my own video on this, but obviously Rollie has way more reach than my tiny channel so I’m glad to hear him getting the good word out there!
As delusional as it is to market coal as "clean", its even more delusional to assert that wind or solar could do the heavy lifting our grid requires in an energy source. The answer must have nuclear to a large degree, and we would need trillions of dollars of investment into materials science to replace the plastic industries and fertilizer industries at scale, because they are both generated by fossil fuels and taking those away would cause mass famine around the world. Even if we did some sort of herculean build out of solar and wind for the grid, we would have to strip mine a continent to get the raw materials to make the turbines and panels. The green energy transition is not possible without carbon based energies. A mix of Nuclear and Nat Gas are the best solution to decarbonizing the grid, and supporting our societies energy needs.
@@LJPugh187 we’ll definitely need a strong backbone of nuclear power in order to enable renewable energy, but the amount needed is actually only on the ballpark of 15-20% according to many studies.
The fertilizer issue actually exists mostly because we’ve over used fertilizers which caused us to not properly maintain the microbial populations in our soil. Many farmers are actively finding that no-till, and low fertilizer techniques build this microbial population back up to the point that their yields dont suffer even though they completely stop using fertilizers. It does take time though and we will need to still use at least some fertilizers during the transition period.
Gas is already perceived as "cleaner" from the general public due to extensive brainwashing campaines from gas companies.
@@vagonedorato I think this has more to do with the fact that it is cleaner when compared to coal. Coal is much worse for emissions and the environment, and as a transitional energy towards something better, the US has as much as it needs. It can quietly displace coal and the emissions from that with gas. There are no great solutions to our problems if you want to be an emissions ideologue. If you are willing to problem solve, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 of our emissions can be dealt with through a use of nuclear and gas to decarbonize the grid. Transport and Agriculture are not feasible at scale(what makes us modern) without fossil fuels. We're going to have to make hard decisions, there are no scenarios where we get our "ideal".
@@SaveMoneySavethePlanet The US Agriculture sector will be able to make due with less fertilizer inputs due to technological innovation. Tech similar to facial recognition will be implemented to scan crops and give them the exact amount of water, fertilizer, pest control, sunlight, etc where as the historic method was blanketing a field in fertilizer. The US will be able to do this because of its access to cheaper capital. Other bread basket regions in the world will not have as much access and will still be thoroughly dependent on fossil fuel generated fertilizers through which the disruption of those supply chains(Russia and Ukraine) will likely prove catastrophic.
Solar and wind are nice where they geographically make sense(excessively sunny or windy regions). The rest of the world will either have to use Nuclear, use fossil fuels, or deindustrialize and roll back all modern amenities.
I’m torn between needing more content from Climate Town in a way I presume druggists do, in an inevitable self-death manner, and not wanting the quality to drop. Seriously, the feeling I get when I see a new video is almost orgasmic. I think I watch them 3 times just to take it all in.
And it's just a dude saying words.
Isn't a druggist like a pharmacist?
@@popejaimie Druggists really like this channel too, don't judge
@@Perroden but the words are so good, and their arrangement is even better 🙃😜
Hmm, I think that druggists don't, but drug addicts do, but when druggist is drug addict, then he does.
Damn y'all are really killing it. These are not only super informational but really funny.
Left out: The reduction in mining jobs is largely due to the use of assorted technology and methods that reduce the need for (expensive) manpower. These include mountaintop removal and self-driving trucks, for example.
I grew up in Fort Bend County by that Petra Nova plant… I have congenital asthma, eczema, and autoimmune issues… common winds in my area literally blow the pollutants from the WA Parish plant to my childhood home. I’m so livid just now learning one of the heaviest polluting plants nationally is a likely cause - at least in part - for my health suffering.
Love your journalism - hate how I feel the world is so messed up after watching your videos. BUT it's better to know the reality of things!
This isn't reality
@@Perroden How so?
Ok I want to make a quick distinction: he's not a journalist, he's a reporter. It's dangerous to call people journalists when they're not. That's not to diminish the importance of having good reporters like Climate Town, Sabine Hossenfelder, SciShow, etc.
The use of coal have never been higher in the world, that is the reality
@@General_Ictus good point, I didn't consider they are not the same. So a journalist does investigations to find previously not known information, while a reporter "only" gathers and presents already available information? The latter role is also important of course - many of us need the summaries and takes, and here is where this channel shines because they show the absurdity in these cases.
My kind of infotainment😄 Thanks!
BTW, my grandfather was a Pennsylvania coal miner starting at the age of 12. This was obviously back in the late 1800s when child labor was the norm. He died of lung cancer before I was born.
I'm in love with the climate change guy 😢
I absolutely respect the commitment to the Weekend at Bernie’s bit, AND the « not having actually watched it » bit
Can’t believe these videos are free to access. Thank you for everything y’all do
Why would they not be free?
He's trying to raise awareness of corporate and governmental incompetence, corruption, collusion and nepotism that is robbing the tax payer and destroying the planet. He's not going to get that message out of its hidden behind a pay-wall.
they are filled with fake information
Damn, is that you in the pfp ?
@@TheFalseShepphard 🤨
@@ericxplackis Would.
Great video. Thanks for making this one. Now if only we can get those that make money off coal out of office.
0:58 That squirrel got some unreal air
Jesus, your style is impeccable. You are really standing out even among most perfectly intense stuff on youtube, I'm not even talking about generally boring climate-related people. Thank you and please never change!
Thank you for including the importance of supporting and providing for miners and communities! I grew up in southern Illinois when all the coal mines closed in the 90s; Chicago based environmentalists made policies without considering the communities that were impacted (~6 hour drive; Chicago and So IL are 2 different words). The economy never recovered. Families that had lived there for generations were scattered around the country. Capitalizing off feelings of anger and betrayal toward academics and democrats, far right Christian nationalists took over once union-strong communities by the early 00s…
(coming of age in this environment and also liking historical fiction, I now have chronic Cassandra syndrome…)
As a former. Coal miner from wv I know what u mean here it's coal mines or moonshine drugs or move on down the line
I work in the coal industry and at the current prices, and the need for developing countries to burn coal worldwide its not going anywhere. The crappy duty cycle of solar and wind makes it hard for base load without storage.
And that's why we need to be investing in nuclear alongside wind and solar
I laughed so hard I sneezed orange juice through my sinuses and into my eyes. I have never experienced that stinging sensation before
Always a great day when climate town drops another video. And HALF AN HOUR long, I love it
It's a quarter of the length of Weekend at Bernie's!
This is especially funny given all the drama we have here in germany about a town getting bulldozed to mine all that sweet coal underneath it. Sure, the plan had been approved years ago and nobody lives there anymore, but now is the time for RWE, the company who will mine there, to actually start digging up that coal. Depending on who you ask, we either really need that coal until we can phase it out, or we don't. BTW, we've been phasing out coal so long, you can legally have sex with the "Kohleausstieg" in every nation imaginable. It also has experience with that, because it got fucked alot in those years, getting pushed back again and again. Partly because we germans REALLY don't seem to like that pesky nuclear energy because... Fukushima and ironically, the green party. And we phased out nuclear power in record time. I wonder why coal is taking so lo... It's coal companies having more leverage than nuclear power companies, that's why.
It is stupid how people close down nuclear reactors becouse of fear instead turning large amounts of land into dead zones and bulldozing villages
It's also ironic that the Netherlands and Poland around about to lean heavily into nuclear power to phase out their fossil fuel needs even as Germany is reactivating coal plants.
It's ironic in light of this video, in that it debunks a lot of the 'renewables will solve everything' points. Germany spent half a trillion Euro on wind & solar the past ~20 years, built out enormous capacity in VRE, and runs a net power export deficit financially, because it has to give away excess power for free on the EEX and buy at full price when the sun and wind aren't doing their thing. There's also the massive mess with the two major transmission lines that have to be built in Germany from north to south, the completion time of one of which got pushed back from 2022 to 2028-ish.
And nobody dares to mention 'energy storage' in Germany, unless it's hydrogen, which is pure tosh.
The only thing that works reliably in Germany now that the last nuclear plants will shutdown in a few months are the coal and gas plants, but then the German Green party has always been the coal party (look up some of their 1980s flyers, it's wild), so this is as they say nothing new.
@@MayaPosch renewables also suffer from the NIMBY (not in my back yard) problem. Whenever a suitable site for storage and cables and panels and wind power plants is found there are alot of locals going ballistic about the prospect of having to look at those things on a daily basis.
@@blackm4niac which is weird to me because my hometown in very rural NY is happily building solar farms. The area is predominantly hydro with exactly 1 small (10MW) gas plant, and now anybody (buisnesses) with a large grass field they have been mowing for ages like the airport, are happily taking state and federal money to build solar, and 0 NIMBYism seems to exist over them. Maybe we just like clean air and have been putting up with acid rain from the midwest's coal for so long nobody in the area likes the idea of building fossil fuel plants.
The is no clean or dirty energy. There is ETHICS or CORRUPTION... Moderation or consumerism. Greed or altruism.
Btw, the carbon /toxicity footprint of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
As one of the boomers of this channel I have a PSA:
Watch Weekend at Bernie's (1989)
That is all
I’m glad you are encouraging America to move beyond coal. I would appreciate if you included more encouragement for China and India to STOP building new coal power plants.
this video comes out at the perfect time! the coal industry destroying the town lützerath in germany right now.
thanks for putting so much work and effort in your videos. really enjoying them :)
greets from germany
Yeah, but Germany never had a flourishing solar industry that could have... Oh wait, I am just hearing we had one, and then it was killed by conservative governments. But surely wind will... What do you mean, ten times the height as minimum distance in Bavaria?
If only Germany kept it's 20+ nuclear power plants around, maybe they wouldn't need to burn so much coal, after Putin stopped the natural gas export.
@@johanneswerner7649 Or if we had properly switched to renewables.
@@ThePixel1983 But, but, but the windmills are dEsTRoYinG tHE LAnDsCApe, wait what the coal mine is visable from space? Ah, well at least it isn't in Bavaria.
@@unkeptmenace And no power lines! And no nuclear waste storage! Only energy for Bavaria, and please only the kind that can make a lot of money for power companies and politicians!
The delivery of this information is just fantastic. The humour, including the professional amateur film making techniques repeatedly breaking character adds so much and makes the whole thing massively more engaging.
Keep on doing what you do! This is a fine example of using video to actually affect change, providing the financial basis for why you're right and giving people information on how they can get involved in a truly effective sense.
Miners were often paid in a special currency that could only be used at the company store. Congress actually had to pass a law against it!
The thumbtitle makes so much sense, just seconds in, I get it. Damn, finally
Babe new climate town video just dropped. Another masterpiece, humour was on point, script was sharp and easy to process. Thank you
Clean Coal is the Theranos of energy 😂😂😢😢😭🫥
I'm so glad Joe sent me to this channel. This is the dose of comedy and science I was missing in my life
Legitimately laughed out loud on a couple of points in this video. Also, I commend the commitment to not watching Weekend at Bernie’s until after editing.
The intense research, production value, and structure of these videos makes the concepts so easy for just about anyone to understand. Thank you for what you do. I love all of these
Intense research? Lolz.
@@Perroden presumably you have a better take?
Weird that you're not on Nebula yet, I feel like this content would fit in well with the vibe there. Great video!
I would love to see a video from Climate Town about nuclear energy.
Love the fact you took a picture with the guy working the parking 4:23
I love that you included the history of coal miners in this video. They were once a cornerstone of the US labor movement and we all owe a lot to their sacrifices.
Climate Town singlehandedly saving the world with his youtube channel. Thank you so much for your influence in culture and high quality videos
No he's not. He's saying a bunch of nonsense with zero evidence
@@Perroden his sources are public and reliable, where are yours? And even if all of what he said is nonsense, being indipendend from the middle east is a must, being indipendent even from the gov grid with a few solar panel and accumulator + emergency generator should be see as a good thing, indipendency is freedom, oil (and coal) are not
@@bjkkkoocoal is so import for most emerging markets, it drove Brittain, China, and the US to growth. And the ban that was in 2020 (if i remember correctly) on coal were not much more than a plan to move the pollution further away. Out of mind, out of sight. So now all the coal that Australia, Brittan and the us just goes the Asia instead. Most of this climate talk is just pr
@@Perroden This is you
Source: Trust me bro
@@Perroden he literally cited academic papers and independent organisations such as the coal miner's Union
I thought clean coal was already dead by the time I graduated in 2008. Certainly combined cycle gasification plants were already dead due to their higher CO2/kW-hr.
At the time I was disappointed about it because I really wanted to be an engineer at a power plant but today I can look back and say I’m glad coal is dieing.
Here’s to not burning stuff for energy! 🍻
What a masterpiece. I recently watched a few older videos and it's insane to see the rise in "production value"/quality :) keep it up
As someone named Cole, I eagerly look forward to a day when I don't have to hear any more goddamn COAL jokes
Makes sense
I would have gone for the Sherlock Holmes joke personally
@@user-te5po4bu8o I'm very proud of my fictional ancestor!
Cole going out of the shower.
"Oh hey, Clean Coal" - wife
I'm so glad that you talked about Edison's animal abuse as not many people do. More climate change content creators should talk about animal ethics and the relationship between how we treat them and the climate.
An ironic part is that he was trying to discredit AC power (which favored large scale production and high voltage distribution over Edisons plan of small scale production) - Edison wanted everyone to own their own generator which he would happily sell you, and would have been massively inefficient. He tried to scare people that higher voltage AC power was too dangerous by killing animals - and inventing the electric chair (so yeah it ended up being a primary method of execution for a while). And after all that - he lost. AC power won. All that shit, killing larger and larger animals, inventing gruesome methods of killing people - all failed
@@philballphotography You know what's funny, to top it off, that ass Edison wasn't even right! (shocker...) AC is actually safer than high-voltage DC... Because there's a point in time where AC is at 0 volts, so like, your muscles aren't being artificially forced to grab the wire (at that moment). So it's "possible" to pull your hand away. DC doesn't do that!
Yeah, I totally get killing a few animals; the knowledge we have today wasn't there, and well, you gotta test it SOMEHOW.
But the dude could have stopped after like 2. He didn't have to keep going.
Animal ethics in science is a tricky subject, but broadly I would say putting an elephant in the electric chair as a marketing act falls on the wrong side of the line.
I'm just surprised he didn't mention the absolutely horrifically botched human execution he did too. Like it was crazy
Thanks to this video, I have “I owe my soul to the company store” stuck in my head on a routine basis. It doesn’t even relate to my life in any way. It’s just stuck there.
Why does everyone forget about Beulah? Must be because it's far older than Weekend at Bernie's. The first clean coal plant in the United States was Dakota Gasification in Beulah North Dakota. It's been running for more than 35 years, turning coal into synthetic natural gas, fertilizer, electricity, and pipelined CO2 for enhanced oil recovery in the Weyburn oil patch. I'd call it proven, if very specific, tech at this point.
Saskatchewan Power Corporation has another clean coal pilot plant just north of that in Estevan Saskatchewan which also compresses waste CO2 for the oilfield. There were lots of difficulties getting it running reliably and it's been super expensive. But that's how prototypes work. Will the next generation of clean coal be economical? Perhaps, because SMRs are not looking to be as cost effective as promised. And we still need the shear inertia of a massive force spinning turbines to provide grid stability in areas like North Dakota that don't have the rain and mountains for hydro. Inverters and batteries don't cut it (with the exception of the inverters that Manitoba Hydro uses with their DC bipole transmission system from their hydro in the far north)
Great video as always! A common anti battery and solar argument I hear all the time is people complaining about all the evil mining for minerals needed. Would be interesting to see a video on how minors are treated for other materials. Plus and recycling and the fact that you can get the minerals back out of batteries, unlike burnt coal or oil.
I’d be very interested in this too. I don’t think there’s any question that there are human rights abuses in battery mines. But I keep hearing that we can have a 100% closed loop for battery materials. Would be interesting to see if anyone has successfully done that. Even if it’s just like 50 batteries they’ve recycled a couple times. That would at least be proof of concept and somewhere to hang some hope.
It's interesting to see the reaction. I think climate activists actually take the mining criticisms to heart and are actually advocating for low-cobalt batteries and end of life recycling. It's a fair criticism, but it's used as a gotcha rather than a real concern that could be solved.
@@cadekachelmeier7251 There is a huge amount of resources being put in battery tech, and unlike clean coal it is actually paying off. Check out sodium batteries.
@@nicksurfs1 Redwood Materials is a headline battery recycling company that recovers virtually 100% of battery materials, aside from containers, foams and plastics, which get sent elsewhere to be reprocessed. The actual battery materials though can be endlessly recycled. There appears to be no limit, as no power is being drawn from them or change occurs in them. In their specific chemistries, they are merely a sophisticated storage medium, so once separated they can be used again and again. One benefit of recycling is that they become purer with each recycle, and so potentially become better batteries the next time around. Which means eventually that if every battery is recycled, only top-up mining would be required.
@@AlSelk Yeah, I'm pretty hopeful for it overall. One of the good things about EVs is that the designs mostly don't care what battery chemistry they use. So as battery chemistry improves and changes, we don't really need to make any fundamental infrastructure changes.
Hey, I want to thank you seriously for something: the whole climate situation gives me a lot of anxiety, like clinical anxiety, and as i am immersed in it every day watching your videos really helps me discover studies and papers while having a good laugh and not wanting to become Unabomber 2.0. Keep up the good work!
The greatest cure for anxiety is to do something about it. It's hard AF to get over the initial bump and get started, and it's hard to know what to pick, but once you get the ball rolling it gets easier and easier, and the anxiety fades to hope as some little corner of the world near you starts to look just a little bit better thanks to your efforts.
Citizen's climate lobby is a good one
Strong towns is a GREAT one (because better urban design can reduce vehicle emissions much faster by reducing vehicle miles traveled and overall demand for gas. Also it's just like, nicer to live in nice places that you can safely walk around)
And those are just the 2 I know about that you can do immediately. There's definitely more near you for things like community gardening and advocacy to the local mayor to mandate the removal of gas lines, so you can kill methane emissions on the demand side.
The hole in the Ozon Layer over Antarctica is supposed to be shut around 2060.
It is not the same as it is not influenced by CO2 emissions, but the example shows that it is possible to make a change by reducing emissions.
It just takes a while and it needs the ambitions to do something about it.
Sorry to.burst ur bubbles,but coal is still a huge proponent of majority of the world's population of 8 billion lives,yes it might be dieing in whatever small pockets of ur little hippie green save the earth communal earthship portlandia let us talk about climate change while I sip my $8 Starbucks latte and eat my daily $12 avocado sandwich from trader Joe's which is draining the water tables in Spain dry and causing droughts and famines suburbia.
At this very moment,there is a 12 year old girl in Indonesia digging out these beautiful nuggets of British thermal units
@@kylejohnson6775 oh I actually am in Extinction Rebellion, have been for a few years, I try to do what I can as a struggling student, but everyday is worse news. Not only from a climate change point, but also a legal one with all the new laws and arrests surging
@@thorn6809 I agree wholeheartedly, we just need to do something about it.
Although I'll admit CFCs were used in a much smaller quantities for stuff it'd be replaceable with other substances. We need to get 7 billion people off coal, not change some refrigeration units
It feels weird not being part of a statistical majority. Granted, it's been about 25 years since I saw either movie, but I have actually seen them.
This is the most underrated TH-cam channel
Clean Cole sounds like a rap name for a hip christian pastor preaching straight edge to kids
Love the script. I can't believe that someone can be this funny and informative at the same time.
My family immigrated as coal miners. The conditions were horrible, the local graveyard is full of mass produced tombstones from mining disasters, but even the union leader doesn’t want to chat training to transition to new careers. It’s become a cultural self-flagellation where identity supersedes reality, even if all it does is pad the pockets of billionaires.
Every time you say the name of a thing you’re fighting against, even if you’re dissing it, you strengthen the brain pathway to it, making it more likely to be thought of, liked, & become the default idea on the topic, etc. (George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant)
I call it “supposedly non-dirty coal”.
Atomic shrimp uses that for his scambaiting videos, and “the kind of personal information you should never share with a stranger on the internet” is now a permanent part of my vocabulary. It really works!
I just call it "Coal, a thing should be illegal to burn and mine"
Please don’t reduce Lakoff’s work so simplistically. He deserves better and so does his powerfully effective thesis.
@@lizziebkennedy7505 Don’t know who yer talkin to but nobody here did anything like that..
@@lizziebkennedy7505 Explain how they simplified their work?? No one on youtube ever explains there reasoning for claims, just make grand statements and dip
20 seconds in and I'm already smirking from ear to ear. This channel is awesome.
I love climate town videos! Despite being about the scary anxiety inducing topic of Climate change/global warming, they always make me feel positive that things will change and get better.
Thank you so so much for yet another awesome and inspiring video. Instead of hopeless, I feel encouraged to keep fighting!
About solar and the batteries : you need coal and oil to extract the material and build them, if u do the math properly, the carbon footprint of solar is as horrible as coal.
Man. How can one be so wrong. Are you judging by Exxon data from the 80s?
@@benediktkaufer8194 to get the raw materials, you need fossil fuels, that's just a fact. Some experts has done the maths, It takes 30 years for a solar pannel to give back the energy it took to build it (including transportation and installation). If u include recycling process (that uses fossil fuels again) the operation is a loss. The life expectency is 30 years for a solar pannel. Do some research on it.
Amazing video! You just scratched the surface of the pollution control devices used to make coal plants “clean”. In the early 2000s I worked for a company that built huge selective catalytic reduction units that were supposed to remove NOx gases from plant emissions. They looked like giant Star Trek Borg cubes sitting near the plant. I left the company in 2004 and never learned how effective these units were but the company eventual closed its local office and was bought out by another firm and the coal plan with the fancy machine attached to it closed its final stage in 2015. So much for clean coal.
I feel like clean coal has always been a joke.
There are different types of coal that but relatively cleaner than others, but even the best (anthracite coal) is still atrociously dirty. Natural gas has some promise, but mainly in that it takes negligible effort to convert a natural gas plant into a biogas plant. (Exact same molecules being burned, just now sourced from atmospheric carbon captured by plants. Just put clippings, foodwaste, and sewage into a vat with the right bacteria and 0 oxygen and you get methane.) Not that i think biogas is the future, but it atleast makes the CO2 output less of a factor because those sources would have just released carbon back into the air anyway, but the other polutants like particulate matter and NOx are inevitable when burning something. (NOx is made by heating air, kinda hard to have a combustion based power plant without superheating the air)
This topic is really relevant to me right now, since a village in Germany is being demolished just because the largest german energy producer *said* they needed the coal hiding beneath🙃
What happened to the environmental assessments that needed to be done before Tesla could build a gigafactory there?
@@johh55 To be fair, "decided to stop buying russian gas" only after lots of arm-twisting. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets found that the coal/oil industry astro-turfed the movement against nuclear energy, which would be putting them out of business by now. (Japan shows that it's mainly regulation and lack of experience that stands in the way of building reactors)
@@Vaeldarg
Sad thing is uranium based reactor is not sustainable in the long term as we don't have much uranium accessible.
It can only buy us some time (max a century, likely less) before we get other things to work. Be it fusion or other fission.
But there is also energy producer lose out on generational wealth. We can't have that. The poor poor rich people cannot afford their 1.8k used lays chip bag now, wouldn't they.
Yea, most of us are screwed and we will be happy.
@@asgdhgsfhrfgfd1170 They probably should've actually looked at the charts that show, even with every disaster counted together, the death toll of nuclear disasters are next to nothing in comparison to burning coal. If they didn't have anything to actually replace coal OR nuclear plants with, they may as well have been advocating for Germany to not be a modern nation at all.
@@johh55 no, several assessments show that the coal under that village is not needed for energy security
"The sun isn't reliable enough!"
I'm sorry, but one cannot get more insane than this argument lol. The sun is the most reliable thing that has ever existed for any life on earth. The sun is so reliable we use it as a metaphor for ultimate reliability
This is so good, because I've never seen Weekend at Bernie's either.
What I love most about Climate Town videos is definitely the hard-hitting well-researched climate facts. But the thing I love second-most is the effort dumped into throwaway gags like Rollie doing a selfie with the Icon parking lot attendant where that power plant used to be.
I wouldn't evacuate the renewable storage problem as swiftly as you did there... Especially not with batteries which scale very badly at industrial levels compared to more efficient (but still limited) technology such as pumped hydro.
I think you should address the nuclear elephant in the room and acknowledge that we'll need low-carbon, baseload sources of power if we want to power entire countries grid without having to sink untold amounts of metal into batteries (and the enormous mining footprint that implies...)
These videos are artistic masterpieces.
This channel is my Trombone Hero. 🏆
Great video! We're very intrigued about the short future of coal. Our team recently researched nuclear energy, since many people talk about it as the best and cleanest solution that we have right now. There are a lot of hurdles that our producer found and clarified in our research, and we're curious to see how is going to be the development of nuclear energy in this run against fossil fuels.
Keep up the good work.
Nuclear energy is something that along with renewable energy can easily power the world, with quite literally zero emissions, and this is assuming we don't learn how to properly dispose/recycle nuclear waste in the future. Currently, we would need about 15% to 20% of the world to be power by nuclear energy so that the rest could be covered by renewable energy. We just have to be careful with nuclear energy, as it can turn into the beast coal did if kept unchecked and relied on too bad, because at the end of the day it still produces waste that we don't entirely understand how to deal with. I'm in romania, and I'm quite happy that our country has enough nuclear plants that we are now able to start a HUGE shift to renewables.
Nuclear energy is just the new fossil fuel. It's sponsored by all the same fossil fuel people and it's still based on digging stuff out of the ground and "burning" it. Plus it's the new conservative culture war. Take it with many spoonfuls of salt.
Thank you so much for uploading! I know we're a small community but I care way more about these uploads than any other channel, they're just that well made.
YOUR INTRO ALONE COULD BE A FANTASTIC VIDEO!
But seriously waaaaaay too much talent here.
Hey! It's my company, NRG. I have wondered about this claim for a long time... Good to know!
Favourite youtuber by far. Every single video hits the perfect balance between entertainment and informative! You’re a big reason why I’m back in school to get my environmental science degree!! Thanks for everything you do
Do they teach you about the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex?
Where I live in Illinois the wind is always at least 5mph and is usually more like 10-15. We have windmills everywhere and last year I got the option to switch to a line powered by 100% wind. Not a single outage yet.
This channel and the Some More News channel are the most relevant and reliable sources of information for me these days. Fantastic work. Please do that thing where you add a join button to your channel so that I sart donating a dollar or two per month. Please.
Clean Coal is such a weird concept for anyone with a basic understanding of physics. The energy we gain from coal is from the increase in entropy of the neatly packed carbon in it. If you want to want to separate and pack the created CO2 away again, you will have to use the majority of the energy you got in the first place, making the entire endeavor pointless.