There’s three main sides to your question. There’s the cost in terms of dollars, the costs in terms of jobs and the cost to the environment.
The dollar cost of coal is very high, it’s the third most expensive form of electricity generation, surpassed only by solar photovoltaic and solar thermal. Purely from an economical perspective, it makes sense to switch to almost anything but coal. Advanced coal with CCS costs $141 per megawatt hour, advanced gas costs $66. Even using the cheapest form of basic coal with no carbon capture ($100/MWh) is more expensive than wind ($97/MWh) or hydro power ($90/MWh).
Another thing to remember is that the fossil-fuel industry receives massive subsidies. Quite how much is hard to determine, different sources provide figures that vary between $10 billion and $52 billion per year.
In terms of job losses, this is a genuine issue. As a fuel source coal is labour intensive, more people are required to extract and process coal to produce each unit of power than almost all other power sources. Switching from coal to other fuels will cost jobs.
Here in the UK the coal mining industry was decimated back in the 1980’s – not because of climate change but for political and economical reasons. 30 years later and the towns and villages that relied on the coal industry are still recovering. You can read more about this defining event here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_miners%27_strike_%281984%E2%80%931985%29
The environmental costs of climate change can be viewed as both an economical impact and the effect on the planet and species upon it.
Sir Nicholas Stern headed the most thorough investigation into the capital costs of climate change (the Stern Review). This calculated that current losses were $600 billion per year and were likely to rise to $2 trillion per year.
The World Health Organisation conducted extensive research and worked out that in 2000 there were 150,000 deaths annually as a result of climate change and that the figure would likely double by 2030.
Power generation is the largest single contributor to climate change and coal is the most widely used fuel.
A move away from coal will reduce generating costs significantly, it will help ensure energy stability and independence, will reduce the cost of fuel subsidies, will improve people’s health and will reduce the impact on the environment; but it will cost jobs. The savings made could create many new jobs, but history shows that this rarely happens and the money gets swallowed up in other areas of government expenditure.
At the end of the day it’s a balancing act with savings and the environment on one side and income and job security on the other. Which side you come down on is probably going to be determined by how each individual would be affected.
PS – You might want to check out the number of extreme weather events. You’re saying they’re no more common now than they were when there was less CO2. In fact, there’s been a massive increase overall. The number of heatwaves has doubled, their intensity has tripled, the death-toll from heatwaves has risen by 600 to 800%. Flood events have increased fivefold since 1950 and the number of droughts has tripled. Since 2000, for every one cold weather record there are 17 hot weather records that are being broken.
The frequency and intensity of storms has increased globally but there is evidence to suggest that storm activity follows a 60 year cycle, the peak of which we recently passed. This makes it hard to say what impact, if any, global warming has had / is having on storm activity.