Coal is bad enough that we can justify getting rid of it without disingenuous comparisons of decently compensated mining jobs to min-wage sandwich assembly.
Nobody is saying coal is a key aspect of the economy but thanks for the straw-man.
I'm saying you can justify getting rid of coal without borderline lying by comparing the jobs to burger flippers. These are respectable heavy industry jobs that pay respectable salaries and they are a large enough fraction of the economy in a couple states that you can't just hand wave it away as a non-issue. A good point of comparison is the logging/timber industry which employs similar numbers and is also geographically concentrated. We need to be honest about the fact that there will be regional economies that are hurt badly if we artificially get rid of coal faster than the market forces are doing.
The comparison is useful to demonstrate how small the industry is. No one thinks the loss of Arby’s would collapse the economy, but politicians act like coal would.
Arbys does not underpin the economy of west virginia or any other state. If it did underpin a state economy you can bet your ass they'd fight for it and politicians looking to curry favor with those politicians would also fight for it.
Coal doesn’t underpin WV’s economy, it simply doesn’t employ that many people. In 2019 it was at 13,988 in a state with 1,767,859 people. If anything it’s the federal government that’s underpinning WV’s economy.
For all the jokes WV isn’t like what most people picture. For example people think of poverty, yet while far below CA median household income is significantly higher in WV than the UK, Germany, or France.