As a son and grandson of coal miners. That is just politician speak. My father and grandfather can't be retrained to do something else and make the same amount.
So you don't want a handout and you don't want re-training, then what do you want? For someone to wave a magic wand and make coal economically viable again?
They want honest wage for honest work. Pretty straight forward. The government sure subsidizes industry in California, New England and coastal cities, why not middle America?
As someone who enjoys breathing clean air, they can't continue to mine coal. They just cannot. And I'm sorry they feel that way about their wages, but they have to continue to adapt.
Coal is dead due to the economies of natural gas. Besides, China uses coal like crazy, and we pay China to do so, so as far as the atmosphere goes, the US not using coal doesn't really matter that much.
They say they are working to reduce consumption, but at the same time, they are building more coal fired plants, which is projected to increase through at least 2020. They are also building plants in other countries.
According to Bloomberg, China’s coal-fired generation capacity may increase by as much as 19 percent over the next five years. While the country has canceled some coal-fired capacity due to lack of demand growth, China still plans to increase its coal-fired power plants to almost 1,100 gigawatts, which is three times the coal-fired capacity of the United States.
While it is true that China is building wind and solar units domestically, many of these units are being curtailed due to lack of infrastructure and a preference for coal.
Edit: The Chinese government indicates they are though, which coincides with your 2013 statistic.