privatising profits, socialising losses

Much as there is dishonesty at the root of the gangster Trump’s specious argument of “national security” to justify the tariffs on steel and aluminium on US allies and significant trade partners, Boing Boing is reporting that the Department of Energy will invoke antiquated emergency powers in order to subsidise unprofitable and polluting coal and expensive and resource-intense nuclear power and turn away from more innovative and agile sources.
Not only will delays in the scheduled retirement of facilities continue to do damage to the environment for all of us—though there’s no emissions at the end-stage of atomic reactors, mining of fissile materials is still a dirty business—and threaten to undermine innovation, US tax payers are buoying up these literal and figurative dinosaurs at a fairly high premium.