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Originally Posted by wittynickname
But you need a means of transitioning away from coal/logging, etc. These are industries that simply aren't sustainable over the long term if we're to leave any kind of livable environment for 100+ years down the road. And that's where education comes in, so that these people have children who get a solid education that gets them employment going forward, not for tomorrow, but for the next 40 years. It's not simple, but we can't go back to 100 years ago when Pittsburgh was covered in smog and smoke from steel mills and all of WVA was coal mines. That's not sustainable, period.
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Transitioning from coal to other means is fine, but the issue is there isn't transition. The coal sector has been neutered before any new education programs or development of new energy construction that will bring in new blue and white collar jobs has even started.
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The biggest issue is that these are initiatives that should have started 20+ years ago, but they didn't, and now we're hitting a breaking point.
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Agreed they should have started earlier. But this is the sinking boat we are in, do we not bail out the boat enough in order to keep people afloat until the boat is no longer needed, or do we simply let the boat sink while we attempt to stay afloat and wait for help that may or may not arrive?
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Also: Trump and the GOP aren't going to fix the coal industry dying, the logging industry dying, the steel industry dying. They're industries whose best times were in the past, and we need to transition away from them.
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What alternatives to steel and timber are present?