alt Hacker NewsNot long ago this was linked to coal and cancer. And even higher rates of cancer and lung disease correlated with higher standards of living. Should we start advocating for the return to coal? Maybe transplanting cancers to cause better prosperity?
> "Exiting" fossil fuels means either nothing, or it means impoverishing your people.
Utter bullshit. Exiting fossil fuels means prosperity for the people in the near future (the next generation). Staying on fossil fuels means stagnation and decay.
Don't believe me? I welcome you to visit West Virginia. Or pretty much any former coal-mining region, for that matter. Almost all of them are a depressing sight.
Aren't the former coal-mining regions badly impoverished today because we dramatically cut back our usage of their primary economic product?
I'm not sure that supports your point. I don't think they are stagnating and decaying because they want to keep mining coal specifically, it's just that the coal miners and their next generation don't have any capital to found cool innovative startups, and not enough people with capital have any incentive to go there and make job-creating ventures to employ them.