[wqtz]

What transition plans do you recommend for coal producing counties? The issue is that these coal counties get fucked (for a lack of a better words) with coal and without coal. With coal every family suffer generational health problems. But atleast they get to eat and live. Without coal they do not have an economic system to make a living out of it. During the colonial times (here we go) the Bri'ish forced Bengal farmers [0] to cultivate indigo which caused literal famines. They could not produce food crops and colonialist didn't bother to compensate the farmer obviously. Then the farmers got "fucked" over again, when industrial revolution resulted in creation of artificial indigo and farmers struggled to make a transition to another crop. Now, your average WV native is far from a Bengal peasant but idea of policy based restrictions on making a living can be compared. My argument is that broad sweeping policies about establishing how people in particular regions make a living needs to carefully evaluated. Now, I am not for or against coal at all. Coal producing counties are always marginalized and politicians rarely care about them except for election times. For/against coal does very little in terms of coming up with a solution. If you are against coal present a solution on how these counties can transition to making a living without being relocated.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_revolt

[jbattle]

There are only 12,000 coal miners in WV. Only 45,000 in the whole US. Obviously there are a large cast of others supporting the miners directly and indirectly (e.g. truck drivers, manufacturers of mining equipment, etc).

There are 341 million other Americans that have an interest in where our energy comes from (and what goes into our atmosphere).

(I'm all for generous support for any American facing major disruption because of macroeconomic changes btw. Getting rural places a fair share of national prosperity is a national problem)

[s1k3s]

This is a great argument and perhaps the best argument to support the idea of going back to coal. I don't know how to answer this because I'm not an economist, but I'd suggest subsidizing such people from taxation until we reach a green energy goal. Sadly though, politicians don't address this at all.