Suggestion, when the mines close, the workers should be given a golden handshake (not the execs as is usual), generous enough to live on for their lives in dignity.

Ideally this should be paid for by the coal mining companies that exploited the coal workers to extract coal and profit, at the cost of the environment and often their worker’s health, the same companies who having made their buck are now pulling out and leaving their workers high and dry. But even if the golden handshake is paid for by the government it seems to me that compared to the $Bns that it costs for a new generation of nuclear power plants (before even considering running costs, waste management costs and decommissioning costs) paying off a few coal miners is a reasonable investment to prevent sudden decline of the coal mining communities and the types of resentment that decline and abandonment causes towards a greener future and the rise of reactionary politics we see on the back of that.