The other nations went to solar panels, wind farms, and whatever clean energy makes people feel righteous at dinners. But here we're still using coal. Not figuratively. Literally. Back when my grandfather first started working in the mines, the plant at the edge of town belching black into a sky formerly blue.
Four generations of lungs covered in the same dust. Four generations deciding between breathing clean and eating regular. Sometimes they come around, activists with their documentaries and anguished faces asking why we don't just transition. Just educate. Just become yoga teachers or software engineers or whatever else people do in locations where the economy is not one single black rock taken from the earth.
Just like it was easy. Like you may just stop becoming what you are. But dinosaurs didn't elect extinction; the planet simply proceeded without inquiring permission. Still burning coal because that's all we know. Because the other choice is acknowledging that everything our grandfathers and fathers created is out of date.