So which is better, Hydrocarbon Power or Poor People?
Forgive me for being facetious, but to make my position more clear: I think electrifying the country has had demonstrable benefits to our society. To claim the costs outweigh the benefits is dubious and requires support.
You make a really good point. There's a very clear link between electrification and well-being.
1) Coal pollution kills 10,000 people a year, most of them poor because no rich person would live close to a coal plant. So that's a massive cost weighing heavily on the benefits of coal electrification.
2) Wind & Solar power are cheaper than coal, and not just by a little bit. So much so that in some places the capital and operating costs of wind and solar are cheaper than just the operating costs of coal. In those places abandoning the coal capital is still a win.
3) Much of the capital costs of a coal plant are in it's steam plant and in its grid interconnects. That makes them superb places to turn other heat sources into electricity and great places to inject non-heat sourced green electricity into the grid. So we don't lose all the capital investment into our coal plants.
4) mitigation costs of a tonne of CO2 at $50-$300/tonne make it a no brainer. adaptation costs for climate change would be even higher.
Bill Gates argues your point very strongly in his book. Before he was a climate change activist he was an activist for the health and welfare of the global poor. He understands the importance of electricity to the global poor and firmly rejects any solution that stops the progress of getting it to them.
Electrifying the country happened a long time ago and had clear benefits. Continuing to emit GHGs happens today and has clear negatives. Alternatives are available, and switching does not increase the number of poor people. The cost of CO2 today outweighs the benefit of having to invest less into new infrastructure. Poor people, by the way, are those who are most affected by climate change.
Bill Gates' book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" would be a great place to start.
Mitigation costs are expenses to prevent climate change.
Adaptation costs are expenses incurred because of climate change. Some of them are relatively easy to calculate like $200B to build a sea wall for New York City. Some of them are more handwavy -- what are the costs of mass migration? Most of these costs are incurred by farmers.
So which is better, Hydrocarbon Power or Poor People?
Forgive me for being facetious, but to make my position more clear: I think electrifying the country has had demonstrable benefits to our society. To claim the costs outweigh the benefits is dubious and requires support.