Asklemmy

I don’t think we ever stopped mining it

Why "going back to it" have we ever stopped?

Oil propaganda convinced millions of people that renewable energy sources like nuclear power or wind turbine were dangerous/ineffective.

Basically humans are stupid and don't like change and rich people know and took advantage of it.

It never stopped. Hasn’t even really slowed down.

People need electricity. Renewables are great, but they don’t provide for the full generation need. Coal and natural gas power generation will continue unabated until a better (read: lower price for similar reliability) solution takes their place.

In my opinion, fossil fuel generation won’t take a real hit until the grid-scale energy storage problem is solved.

There are concerns outside of the list you wrote. For example:

• people need energy and coal is a source of energy

Because it got cheaper than natural gas.

Nobody thinks it's clean, they just don't care.

Again? Did we stop?

It doesn't look like anyone has mentioned metallurgical coal yet. Even if you don't burn it for energy, the carbon in steel has to come from somewhere and that's usually coke, which is coal that has been further pyrolised into a fairly pure carbon producing a byproduct of coal tar.

Climate change 'looming'? Dude, it's already here.

Because the ecofanatics focused on fighting nuclear power for 50 years instead of fighting fossile fuels.

Fast forward to now, renewable are not ready at all and they need fossile fuels anyway to provide steady energy. But geopolitics is making oil too expensive, so countries are mining coal again.

In brief, ecofanatics were stupid (and still are) and war in Ukraine.

It didn't, at least not in the way you think. The headlines of the past few days show the aftermath of the last decades: industry contracts that were made in the last century and the political heritage of a generation of politicians who are no longer in power.

Coal is being phased out and that's not changing. It cannot change substantially anyway; there is only so much coal in the gound. Recent political decisions moved to keep most of it there. For technological, political, economical and industry related reasons this won't be a fast process unfortunately.

One of the roadblocks of our transition to a sustainable energy supply is how much money (and in our capitalisic society, therefore, power) the industry itself holds. Coal lobbies will work hard for you not to think about them too much. Nuclear lobbies will work hard for you to blame those pesky environmentalists. A game of distraction and blame shifting. This thread is a good example of how well it's working.

Our resources are limited. This is true for good old planet earth as well as our societies. We only have so much money, time, and workforce to manage this transition. And as much as I'd love to wake up tomorrow to a world with PVC on every roof, a windmill on every field, and decentralised storage in every town center, this is just not realistic overnight. We'll have to live with the fact of our limited resources and divert as much as possible of them towards such a future. (And btw, putting billions of dollars in money, time, and workforce towards a reactor that will start working in 10-30 years is not the way to do this, as much as the nuclear lobby would like you to think that.)

Yes, countries like Germany are turning to coal as a direct result of nuclear-phobia.

The US, with all its green initiatives and solar/wind incentives, is pumping more oil than Saudi Arabia. The US has been the top oil producer on whole the planet for the last 5-6 years. The problem is getting worse.

As many people pointed out, we never stopped. Nor will be stop for decades to come. Unlike what people hear online, change takes time.

In my country, because of a decades long fearmongering and disinfomation campaing that destoyed the nuclear energy industry. So now we're stucked with coal to keep the power running at night and during winter.

Over here (Australia) we never stopped. Our coal lobby is simply too influential with our government.

Because of the war against nuclear plants. Our green party shut down nuclear plants in favor for renewable energy. But as predicted, renewables don't meet our demands. So the green party started building gas plants to compensate instead of keeping nuclear running.

So why? Because of green idiocracry that demand the impossible of green energy (at this moment) and nuclear = evil

It's never really stopped.

But from the actions of those in power it seems they're just plowing through climate change and making money whilst they can. Imagine the decision is we're fucked anyway so let's get mine whilst I can and see if it helps me survive.

Because renewable energy and nuclear energy require significant capital investment, which the private sector and governments in the age of 'fiscal discipline' are not willing to make.

When did they stop?

$$$

I blame the release of both Factorio and Victoria 3.

It's a cheap, non intermittent, easily scalable, and highly available source of energy compatible with existing infrastructure. When the choice becomes rolling electricity blackouts/shutting down factories, or coal powered electricity due to extremely poor planning for the future, coal will win every time. I wish we just started getting renewables running decades ago. Most of the limited electricity in South Africa is produced from coal power plants or diesel generators.

I'm typing this during a rolling electricity blackout. Really not looking forward to my cold shower in the next few minutes