This fails basic economic checks:
First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. To get that, they'd have to sell off their companies, which usually lowers the value, so the cash to purchase needs to come from others willing to put billions of cash into purchasing these companies. The economic loss from this step would be huge.
Next, how much of the coal supply can they affect?
The US mines about a billion tons a year of coal, and has done so for many years, with value about 50/ton, making this around 50 billion a year in produced value. Presumably the places we mine coal has much left (many places put our coal supply at about 400 years worth).
This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude.
So the sheer number of billionaires needing to liquidate their companies, sucking the capital out of circulation, just to purchase land they will never extract any value from, makes this approach a non-starter. It just would not make much dent, if any, since closing a few mines will not reduce demand; others would likely step up production.
This money would likely be much better used to invest in new energy research to wean us off coal in the long run.
First, most billionaires don't just have billions in cash laying around usable to buy things. To get that, they'd have to sell off their companies, which usually lowers the value, so the cash to purchase needs to come from others willing to put billions of cash into purchasing these companies. The economic loss from this step would be huge.
Next, how much of the coal supply can they affect?
The US mines about a billion tons a year of coal, and has done so for many years, with value about 50/ton, making this around 50 billion a year in produced value. Presumably the places we mine coal has much left (many places put our coal supply at about 400 years worth).
This puts the value of the US coal around 20 trillion (ignoring a few factors like present value, etc., but this is around the total value). To purchase the land right from owners would cost somewhere around this amount, give or take an order of magnitude.
So the sheer number of billionaires needing to liquidate their companies, sucking the capital out of circulation, just to purchase land they will never extract any value from, makes this approach a non-starter. It just would not make much dent, if any, since closing a few mines will not reduce demand; others would likely step up production.
This money would likely be much better used to invest in new energy research to wean us off coal in the long run.