I don't understand this sentiment. After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone. The only thing that changed was a spike in the price of EU CO2 certificates which resulted in less electricity being produced from coal. It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector.
Even if you think the whole thing is a scam you see that having a grand mission to invest in modern technology is an incredibly effective jobs program just like sending people to the moon. Nobody has gone to the moon again but we still benefit from all the research from that era.
After years of stagnation at around 911 million tons of CO2 Germany managed to reduce carbon emissions by 40 million tons in 2019 alone.
Meanwhile, France has consistently had around half the per-capita CO2 emissions as Germany due to not giving in to the fearmongering over nuclear power.
It's absurd that this incredible progress is held back by the fear of losing 20k coal jobs when the reality is that those 20k coal jobs prevented the creation of hundreds of thousands in the renewable energy sector.
It's true that preserving jobs is a terrible justification for keeping coal around. But similarly "it takes a lot more green jobs to produce the same amount of energy" is not good; it is bad. We should switch to cleaner energy despite that, not because of it.
Even if you think the whole thing is a scam you see that having a grand mission to invest in modern technology is an incredibly effective jobs program just like sending people to the moon. Nobody has gone to the moon again but we still benefit from all the research from that era.