notceps [he/him]

More than likely it’s a cost issue, coal is artificially cheap thanks to several countries subsidizing the coal industry like Germany, USA and Australia.

There’s also I guess the practical question of how much plant fiber per ton of metallurgical coal is needed, i.e. how land would be dedicated towards ‘producing plant fiber’ for the steel industry.

Metallurgical coal only makes up for rather small part of coal mining, around 7% of all coal production goes towards it, and while the process produces more GHG than just burning it for power it has a less profound impact because it’s just smaller. It’s also one of the places where we can’t really find an alternative, to produce steel you need to use bitumen coal because they have more carbon and less volatiles than charcoal.

On top of that steel is extremely recyclable meaning that any steel produced can be reused pretty much 1:1 with only a small amount of energy needed.

Honestly no the older I get the more I am against ‘rewarding hard work’ because in praxis it always comes down to people getting pressured to do things that will inevitably fuck over their body or cause other complications down the line. Construction workers that ‘work hard’ by carrying two sacks of cement instead of just the one then later complaining about back problems or slipping and seriously injuring themselves. People working shifts without proper periods between them wrecking their sleep hygenie and getting astronomically higher stroke risk as a result the list goes on. Workplace injuries and complications are almost always down to either social pressure to ‘work hard and hustle’ or a shitty boss that just ignores labour laws.

It’s not on workers to work harder it’s on management to hire more people.