Might it be made difficult to replace them, even if they're cheaper, because of the political influence of the goal/gas lobby groups in America?

Utilities commissions and state regulators are enabling these plants to continue to run, even when they’re uneconomical. Consumers pay more than they otherwise would for local electricity due to ideology. That is what this earmark is to fight.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/states-fight-to-save-coal-pl... ("States fight to save coal plants as EPA cracks down")

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2023/03/06... ("Coal is expensive. West Virginia wants more of it.")

https://coal.sierraclub.org/coal-plant-map

Poor policy. Why would we be surprised they make just as poor mistakes as the US does? Perhaps for different reasons, but mistakes regardless.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chinas-new-coal-plan... (March 2023: "Analysis: China's new coal plants set to become a costly second fiddle to renewables")

Not all values or value systems are equal. If after all attempts at discussion and persuasion fails, based on sound facts and data, what else would you expect to be done? It’s also unproductive to have to fight against failed value systems. You’ll always alienate people who are having their value systems challenged, as you’re challenging a core component of their identity. It’s a mental immune response. That does not make their values valid.

> It is not productive to declare that the people who don't agree with your policy goals are emotional, uneducated, and unsophisticated, clinging to "irrationality."

I mean, the logical conclusion of what you are posting is to cut off criticizing someone's argument as irrational or emotional as a line of debate, which doesn't really seem that reasonable.

But like anyways though, I would argue that, in this case, that's neither here nor there; isn't it the case that, most of the time, the debate surrounding coal boils down to "coal is bad for the environment and killing the planet" versus "yeah but that's mostly all we have for jobs in these rural communities"?

Insofar as that's mostly what this is about, I don't think the GP is correct in labeling those arguments irrational. The pro-coal position is very rational for those people in the short-term. Unfortunately for them, their self-interest conflicts with the interests of broader society, and we will have to steamroll them.

By and large, they aren't very sympathetic at the end of the day. When I was a litigator, one of the practice groups I worked with was an admin law group at my firm that did nothing but Black Lung claims (i.e. big coal companies hired us to litigate against claimant miners). These people got paid a fair wage by their employers for decades (they made rather good money, esp given that a lot of them were high school dropouts), had extensive smoking histories, and then, when they felt the negative health effects of their work + life styles, they wanted to turn around sue their former employers.

Of course, whenever people on the left side of the political spectrum tried to raise the negative effects of coal mines, they dismissively called them "tree huggers", and whenever people like AOC raise the idea of proper healthcare in the country, they deride that as socialism (as if that's a bad thing)--yet they still hypocritically would turn around and try to sue their employers for health care money (which, btw, comes out of a government trust fund under certain circumstances).