"Abandoned" coal mines

Ned has been made aware that the Department of the Interior is making available the sum of $395 million of taxpayers money to help states and reservations clean "up" abandoned coal mines. Ned suggests that his many friends give their mature reflection to this bit of arcana, as it illustrates why coal specifically, and fossil fuels in general, have an inherent cost advantage over renewable forms of energy: members of the Sneering Plutocrat Capitalist class around the world can walk into an area, dig out the resources, be they coal, mercury, uranium or what-have-you, and then walk away, leaving someone else to pay the remediation bill or suffer the environmental impact. So, the next time someone, be it a talking head on teevee or some other blowhard, tells you that renewables are too expensive to replace fossil fuels, remember the "reclamation" bill of a few abandoned coal mines, and the death toll of Chinese miners, reportedly between five and ten THOUSAND a year, all so that we can buy lead-tainted toys at Xmas for our kids.