The coal towns are all dying because coal is as bad as tobacco. A lot of towns in Virginia for example lost jobs when the sale of tobacco was curtailed in the last decades. Because people were dying a lot....

Coal is the same: It pollutes terribly (and now, renewable energy like sun and wind has become cheaper to use). Silverboy: You yourself talk about the pollution of some Chinese cities. It's mostly from burning coal.

So, the coal towns have to go down, the same way the tobacco towns went down, the same way the South of the US went down when slavery was abolished.

It's called collateral damage. It's unfortunate. But it's part of evolution.

The role of the government is to help re-train the workers in order to increase their chances of finding other jobs. But they would have to move to other areas of the country.

Do you know how most of these people deal with their loss?

Guess....

This area (called the Appalachians) has the highest rate of heroin deaths in all of America. It's one of the reasons the towns look like shit.