>Nobody reacts favorably to doing a hard job, every day, and then listening to someone tell them they're killing the planet.

Sorry, but them's the breaks! Don't mean to sound harsh, but larger industries have died for worse reasons. What you do is what the wage earner did in the past: you suck it up and you move on because you have to provide for your family.

How many layers of industries have we invented and then rendered obsolete by subsequent industries? That number varies, in energy alone consider all the changes in distribution, extraction, etc. There has been a great deal of change in our understanding of the world since the invention of the coal industry, and it turns out coal is far more expensive than we realized.

I can see though why this seems synthetic, and why one would be motivated to challenge the assertion of fact. And it is true, that this argument is "synthetic" in the sense that it requires synthesizing many different observations spread over time and space using methods most of us aren't familiar with.

But a lot of us are swayed by the argument that using all this stored up energy in the ground has a side-effect of increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere in direct proportion to that consumption, and that this in turn is unwanted because CO2 is opaque to IR, and it will increase global temperature.

There is a "false debate" about whether or not the global temperature is actually increasing. If you look at the data, or even just the satellite photos of the arctic over time, you should be convinced that there is no debate, and its just a simple fact. (And while a conspiracy that has modified those images is technically a possibility, I think there's enough on-the-ground evidence to back it up. If those Richard Attenborough narrated programs are computer generated, then they have rendering technology beyond anything in Hollywood.)

This simple assertion of fact (and its acceptance by a strong majority) has real ramifications for us in the most personal of ways, because it is a matter of the quality of life for our kids and grand-kids.

The scale of the change we must make is going to be big, and I think the coal miners are going to get the least of it. We Americans are all going to have to consider our consumption more carefully, become more frugal, more European. Our cars will shrink, and become electric. Our physical store options will become more limited, but computer mediated options more diverse, more local, more self-sustaining.

Ideally this change comes naturally as small town kids get educated in major universities in big cities, and are introduced to what I can only describe as an "Enlightenment Era Ethos", one that is rational, reasonable, skeptical, experimental (and innovative), and which is clearly convinced of the reality and importance of Global Warming. Personally, I'm convinced on first principles. Clearly energy expenditure we make, moving a 4-ton SUV 15 miles each way for one person to go to the supermarket, where each item comes wrapped in its own weight of disposable, nested wrappers that serves more of a marketing purpose than a "safe food delivery" purpose."

America can and must go through what I call the "Contraction", where life here becomes more European, communal, local and frugal in terms of the daily details of your life. There will also be the further embrace of a national safety net, and not just for old people. My hope is that cultural shifts will help major chains like Starbucks contract, too, being eclipsed by local cafes with better products, made with greater care, at similar prices, and giving more people the experience of running a business and being the boss! Heck, I would like to see the return of the local ISP business, just a rack of computers in an office park with battery backups and a person who knows how to maintain it all and secure it.

So, don't be fooled. American coal workers have an outsized influence on national politics in those states because reasons. Their jobs aren't more sacred than anyone elses and if they feel "tied to the land" or their "way of life", I tell them: I'm sorry. We will all need to change if we're to keep our ecosystem healthy by averting a possibly unfixible tragedy.

I will volunteer right now and in a legally binding way, to tutor, for free, any coal miner who wants to learn how to code for a living. Reach out via profile. First come, first serve.