Many people believe that Obama era regulations destroyed the coal industry and that by rolling these back we can return to the coal industry we had a decade ago. Donald Trump has been one of the biggest pushers of this narrative and he keeps talking about new “beautiful” clean coal. However, the driving force behind the collapse of coal has been competition, not regulation. In part competition from renewables, but the real culprit is the rise of natural gas. Most estimates indicate that Obama era regulations accounted for less than 5% of the drop in the coal industry whereas natural gas accounts for nearly 50%.
One big reason why people are so resistant to abandoning coal and moving to other industries is that they have been told again and again by Republican politicians (Donald Trump most of all) that the only reason for the coal collapse is environmental regulations pushed by Democrats and that these jobs are going to start flooding back as soon as Republicans take over the government. The reality is that nothing short of massive government subsidies will allow coal to return to the levels it was at less than a decade ago, and there is almost no chance of it returning to massive levels it was once at in the 20th century. It is really hard to face these realities, but it is definitely better, to be honest with these communities and to help them move beyond coal. The ironic part of this is that there are politicians who have proposed things that would help these communities but they aren't Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton actually had a plan to funnel 30 billion dollars into struggling Appalachia to assist these communities.