> But, more and more, base-load coal plants have been squeezed out of the market as ever more renewable energy – particularly solar power – flooded the system.
And so the coal power plants needed more money to stay afloat, but:
> But Delta, in a letter written to the body that makes the rules in the market, said none of the 15 banks it had met had been willing to provide it the necessary coverage because of environmental concerns.
And so
> "The coal-fired generation is going to go out of business in Australia over the next 10 years," he said.
Do you perhaps live in the US? The EU didn't shut down any nuclear power plants. Local politicians in Germany and Sweden (and perhaps more countries) did. And they were very much elected. I don't think any technocrats would do something that stupid.
The EU has elections every five years where the members of parliament are chosen. They very much answer to the public. Why would you think they don't?
The point of mining is that you don't want new blocks too often because it would create too many forks in your chain. The "difficulty" in mining is by design, if we make better hardware that can generate hashes more quickly then we need to make the valid hashes more rare to keep the property that new blocks are reasonably spaced out.