Let's be perfectly clear here, renewables absent the hydro that's been around since the 1930s produces less than 10% of U.S. power (https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3). Coal and nuclear plants are going out of business because they're more expensive than gas. Full stop. The specific FirstEnergy plants that precipitated this particular bit of communism by Trump are going out of business because they didn't clear the PJM and NEPOOL capacity markets. Which of course you know aren't even generally open to renewables because they can't provide firm capacity. You do know how capacity markets work, yes, and locational marginal pricing, and the role of the ISOs, before you run to Wikipedia them right now? Because surely you wouldn't just talking out your ass about something you know fuck all about, although the internal contradictions in your statement would point strongly toward that?
Handicapped how? A combined cycle natural gas plant now produces power at a lower cost than any coal plant ever has, even when they were allowed to kill thousands polluting the air and destroy both our natural environment and our cities with acid rain (which you must support, screw the environment and those sickly bastards with athsma anyway, right?). Which by the way was curtailed long before Obama, who actually quite disappointingly to me was unable to impliment any meaningful restrictions on coal plants (but of course you know that being an expert in this market and not just someone who heard from someone Obama bad, war on coal, MAGA!). Coal and nuclear plants are shutting down because they lost in the free market. Full stop. Why exactly does coal deserve anything, let alone a bailout from our precious tax dollars and more expensive electricity for all of us if it's both more expensive and dirtier than the natural gas that's replacing it? You appear to be completely against every tenent of free markets in this case, you're actually supporting nationalizing an industry for christ sake, based on pretty much zero understanding of how that industry works! Again, have you lost your mind? Don't you see how you're reflexively supporting something that has absolutely no redeeming qualities and is actually the opposite of all you allege you believe in simply because your tribe tells you that you should? How does that not bother you?
