You're the one that mentioned job crushing marketplace forces by competing cheaper natural gas. That has nothing to do with Hillary and regulation. It's about cleaner and cheaper energy. So how are you going to know which ended the coal miner's jobs?
I don't recall saying "job crushing marketplace forces". However, I do realize that other fuels are replacing coal. Currently, coal and gas represent about a third each of the total fuel market. So while jobs may not be increasing in coal, reducing regulation will help preserve jobs and slow down their loss.
When you say "it's about cleaner and cheaper", that's contradictory. Carbon (dirtier) fuels are cheaper than renewable (cleaner) fuels.
It's going to take a while before all the coal burning plants are replaced. It's extremely costly. Which brings up a related personal story. Back in 2000-2004, I was involved in managing the replacement of a portion of coal-fired boilers in 160 NYC public schools. They heated the schools and provided hot water for kitchens and bathrooms that still were using coal burning boilers to heat these schools. The rest of the 1200 schools had already converted to oil or gas years earlier.
When I got involved, I couldn't believe that buildings were still burning coal. As a New Yorker, I remember coal furnaces in my building as a kid, but they were replaced in the 1950's with oil. Yet schools were still using coal in 2000!!!. No scrubbers or anything. All that crap going up the chimney into neighborhood throughout NYC. I handled around 35 of them from little public schools to very large multi burner high schools. New gas burning hot water heaters were installed too.
It cost around $4-500 million to convert those boilers in the 160 schools to dual fuel burning boilers. They'd burn gas until it got down to 18 degrees F. Then they would automatically switch to oil so the gas companies would have enough gas supply for their private customers in the neighborhood. During construction, we had to remove and dump tons and tons of coal, re-do coal bunkers, build new gas supply rooms and bring in new gas lines from the street. We'd build 5000 to 10,000 gallon fuel tanks depending on the size of the schools needs in protected oil tank rooms. Since the old boilers and associated piping were insulated with asbestos, major abatement had to be done. Most of the asbestos got dumped in nearby Pennsylvania by licensed abatement companies. Heck, NY didn't want it. All construction was done while the schools were still in operation. We had to put in temporary oil burning boilers on the street during construction and connect to the school's piping. Dangerous work was done at night or on weekends when there were no kids around.
No one would believe me when I told them in 2001 that schools were still using coal. In people-filled NYC. The projects were really very fascinating and complex and I was very proud of the work we did. So you see, I'm not all bad. In fact, I may have done more to clean-up the environment than anyone else here. If there are any experts here who know the calculations, here are the figures. While there were 50hp to 300hp boilers (times two or three per building; one always as a back-up), for calculations, figure one 200hp burning 18 hours per day for a 7 month winter (figure 6 day week). What's the savings in soot and other elements going into the atmosphere by switching from coal to gas? Multiply that by the 35 schools I converted.
