The coal terrorists are able to demand subsidies not because of their poor workers (they are in fact laying off lots and lots of workers as a side effect of mergers, and their total employment is just several thousand people) but because a lot of local government is funded by coal company shares held by cities. This is why coal is still a thing.
>"a lot of local government is funded by coal company shares held by cities."
Do you have a citation for this? What are examples of the many local governments that are funded by coal company shares? How do you fund a local government by buying shares in a coal company?
Coal is "still a thing" because it is incredibly abundant and despite being horrible for the environment, burning it is a thermally efficient means of creating steam to turn a turbine.
Over here, in Germany, specifically NRW, it's quite literally true - a bunch of local councils hold a lot of RWE (local coal company) shares and fund local services from dividents. They were very upset a couple years back when RWE decided not to pay out dividents. Here's a news article from back then (in German) https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/energie/article152907251/Waru...
