"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.

More dead miners

In a barely-noticed story in today's NYT, Ned observes that yet another coal-mine disaster has occurred in China, killing between 20 and 40 miners. Ned's readers might like to know that he has co-authored a book in part describing the real cost of importing "goods" from China, as that country relies overwhelmingly on dirty coal to produce heavily-subsidized electricity. The Chinese government acknowledges that 2,600 miners were killed last year, but labor and environmental activists put that number at maybe twice that high. Every time we buy something from China we take a little bit of that blood on our hands. And we may well ask as did Macbeth, "Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red."
And our coal industry, for all its faults, suffered only 34 fatalities, still too high, in all of last year. But because we put a high price on dead miners, and the Chinese put a small one, they can make products that can undercut in price anything our people can make. Furthermore, since fuel for cargo ships is untaxed and the fuel is the dirtiest and cheapest available, it literally costs less to ship an item from China to Portland than it does to ship the same item from LA to Portland by truck. And, our own government, Republican or Democrat, stands idly by, sniveling, cringing and wetting its pants at the very thought of offending the WTO or the Chinese.
The next time you see a Chinese-made item on a shelf, say to yourself, "Nothing to see here folks, move along. Move along."