And the paychecks it generates aren't really enough to justify even just the local impacts to health and the environment.
Same story with the steel industry, auto industry, textile industry, etc., in other parts of the country.
And of course the coal companies are still willing to throw lots of money at lobbying, which buys a lot of influence among local politicians.
You can't discount pride. You can't discount being trained and good at a difficult job, and proud at being the one who does it. Money from the government doesn't replace that in the hierarchy of needs. And job retraining is tough when you're 40+.
> We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever
I wonder if the renewables need the labor? If so, I can see that working. If not, then really the only problem is how to handle political dissatisfaction in the short term, and (perhaps) thus our election today.
Even if we doubled or tripled coal production, local economies in coal country would still be limping. It’s not like executives/stockholders of coal companies are dumping all their profits back into the local economy.
As a country/world we’d be better off paying former coal workers a living wage indefinitely, no strings attached, for nothing in return but keeping the coal in the ground.
The US already employs more people in the solar industry than the coal industry. We could conceivably make a policy like big federal wage subsidies to renewable companies willing to relocate to West Virginia or wherever.