Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Compared to the alternatives, coal is worse for air pollution, worse for ocean pollution, worse for global warming, uses more water, is less efficient, and costs more. Coal was a competitive source of energy before we had modern gas plants.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfvBx4D0Cms
“In the executive order, Trump directs the Department of War to enter into agreements to purchase electricity from coal plants to power military operations.”
Bad for the environment, bad for the economy, bad for the military.
Coal is not just bad for global warming, but adds to regular air pollution that kills.
We should use energy that is most efficient to use, not that the president forces people to use, with the exception of protecting the environment.
The military should use whichever energy source best serves its purpose, not the energy source that Trump likes for confused/incompetent purposes, or political purposes.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-orders-pentagon-invest-beautiful-233907955.html
Using supercritical CO2 instead of water for steam engines, we can more efficiently make electricity. They can be built anywhere and work better because the CO2 is like a water and a gas. China currently leads this technology race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNDrC6fkjf0
Even when comparing an electric vehicle getting electricity from a gas power plant to a gas vehicle, electric vehicles are still more carbon friendly because a car’s engine is less efficient at generating power than a gas power plant, and because a lot of carbon is used to transport gasoline. And, as electric grids use more and more low-carbon sources, the electric cars have an even greater carbon advantage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5KF2IhUtY
Global warming is a contributor to increased electricity prices, then politicians use high electricity prices to argue that we need more fossil fuel based electricity, which drives global warming higher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk0Zm_xpk3c
Private electricity companies are supposed to have their prices managed by governments because they form natural monopolies, but they make tons of money because they capture the government and screw over the electricity user.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfRKOlqRG8s
Renewable energy from salt and fresh water doing some weird shit together!?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kko09WIC6yc
Small modular nuclear reactors may end up being a good idea, but they have problems. They require more shielding overall compared to one big reactor. As of yet, they haven’t been built with more speed. They produce energy less efficiently than one big reactor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1r_WPtqLp0
“The timing of this loan makes the investment all the more questionable. As CNBC reports, “When asked why Constellation was receiving the loan now,” an Energy Department official said, “Constellation could have completed the project without help from the Energy Department. But the loan will help make electricity cheaper for consumers on the grid operated by PJM Interconnection, which serves more than 65 million people across 13 states.”
Wanting to reduce electricity rates may be a worthwhile goal—energy costs are outpacing inflation and are rising faster in some states with a higher concentration of data centers—but pouring public money into restarting nuclear power plants is not the best way to achieve this.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/19/three-mile-island-can-restart-without-subsidies-the-federal-government-is-giving-it-1-billion-anyway/
“Over the last decade, roughly one in every 10 dollars of budget authority has worn an emergency tag.
…
On paper, the Office of Management and Budget has a five-part test for emergency spending: It should be necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and not permanent. Congress rarely forces itself to demonstrate, item by item, that all five prongs are met. There’s no neutral referee. Once “designated as an emergency” appears in the bill and the president concurs, the amounts are exempt from caps and PAYGO scorecards.
And because this budget label is separate from more specific “national emergency” declarations under statutes like the Stafford Act or the National Emergencies Act, it quietly turns into a vehicle for funding routine projects. It’s such a procedural magic word that fiscal guardrails all but disappear.
Finally, even when a real crisis exists, so too does opportunism. Emergency bills move fast, face weak scrutiny, and become irresistible means for unrelated projects or those that Congress would never approve otherwise. This dynamic marred the 2012-13 Hurricane Sandy package and has recurred in other disaster bills, not because relief is illegitimate but because speed plus political cover invites provisions that would die in regular order.
…
The stakes of the abuse of emergency labelling are no longer abstract. Interest costs on debt that results from the extra spending are crowding out core functions of government. Americans are hammered with “emergency” tariff costs. The next true crisis will arrive with less room to maneuver if we keep burning credibility on manufactured ones.
A republic that treats emergencies as a governing philosophy is a republic that lives without its safeguards. We must put the word back in its place: as one describing something rare, reviewable, temporary, and paid for.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/06/emergency-has-become-washingtons-favorite-loophole-its-cost-taxpayers-15-trillion/