Just try to imagine if the world switched to solar, or any other form of renewables, tomorrow.

Sure, there would be a huge infrastructure building period, but once built and implemented, where would the hundreds of thousands of jobs come from that all forms of energy mining both create and generate.

There would be no more prospecting for starters. So geologists would vanish to a large extent along with the crews involved in prospecting.

The manufacturing industry would to a large extent, collapse, as heavy machinery is a major part of this Industry.

The minimg towns and communities would cease to exist and the airlines would suffer greatly as a result, as the FIFO workers would all but vanish.

Road and rail transport systems would suffer huge income and job losses.

Those in the power stations would also loose the majority of their jobs, as the power stations would simply become distributions points, if used at all.

Collectively, the states and counties world wide would loose billions, if not trillions in royalties.

This would place huge strain on our(local) already strained health and education systems, as there would be no income to fill the void left from the loss of royalties.

We have already witnessed to effects of converting a very small percentage of users to solar, in that electricity prices have seen huge increases just to pay for those being subsidized into solar. Of cause, these increases are not all attributed to solar rebates, but the rebates had to come from somewhere.

So, at the end of the day, can we really afford to switch to renewables.

Your proposal is that the switch happens in a flash.

This is not a realistic scenario.

The adoption of new technologies is usually achieved in increments - it evolves. New opportunities ride on the back of new technologies. This makes it difficult to see things that may be gained, and merely makes it easier to see what would be lost.

The overnight switch will not happen, my system is now four years old.
Your exercise is what happened when the wheel was invented.
We will survive, a complete switch will be decades away.
Your emphases on mining is overstated, as each generator shuts down so to will the proportionate coal supply.
Why would manufacture be effected at all, they can make their own renewables as well.

There'd be massive blackouts.

Cheers,

Tony

All renewable power supply would still need as much maintenance as coal powered power stations.
The grid, would need still need workers. Wind turbines, thermal power, PV, wave, tide would all still have to be manufactured.
Most of our manufacturing has been exported overseas, so we would have to actually increase our manufacturing ability in a lot of cases.
With peak oil now here, new rail needs to be put in place and with the increase in traffic away from private cars and trucks they would run at a profit.
Mining would still be required for an across the board supply of essentials such as copper, lead, zinc and rare metals. There would still be a need for prospecting.
FI/FO would be a thing of the past as airlines are grounded due to the high cost of fuel if it was available.
The mining towns would become true towns instead of dormitories for FI/FO workers.
It would mean that employment would be redirected to other industries instead of all being involved with quarrying Australia.
The idea that the "normal' consumer, subsidizes installation of PV to rooftop, has been shown to be false.
The main result would be to reduce emissions so that there was a chance of not doing irreparable harm to the environment.

spain did it..[the only jobs were in the building it
plus they did it on first generation..so will soon silde further into the dark ages.

just as we had corrupt scamers selling the junk sitting on peoples roofs..ONLY CAUSE A PR0MISE TO BUY BACK..lol clean power..KNOWing that in just a few years they will double the price paid by us muggs

clean power is the lie
we today hear of melting permafrost..leaching methane
ignoring all the leaking methane from frakking gas well leakage[the lol green alternative

plus we are paying for the pipelines and the high energy cost of cooling the stuff..via new infastructure[ports pipelines..when clearly the best use woyuld be burn it on site add it into the egsisting grid as electicity..

but here again we give advice to the freakers who thunk up enron scam
then took that globally led by ge and other govt lobbied bailouts [ie free bulbs..at a ten fold price of our egsisting bulbs

stop al govt assistance
if you want it PAY FULL COST..
plus punitive for what has allready been stolen..by sneaky spin/lies

its time you realised..less work..is the new norm
not perpetual; work..the people will allways want to be ammused..not perpetually abused.

the green thing was only the lasst gasp of a industrial age of enslavement..soon robots wil be cutting up carcuss..mining the ore..and jobs..ha/ha..work for dole..or in an ikea work camp..or sell ya organs for scrap values...welcome to capitalists hell.