In early November, world leaders met in Glasgow, Scotland, for the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference and issued a declaration that essentially said that humanity will not meet important climate goals without phasing out coal consumption and the massive subsidies that keep the fossil fuel industry afloat.

When I was growing up in the late 1940s and early ’50s in Summit Hill, the community where anthracite coal was discovered by hunter Philip Ginder in 1791, the number of mining jobs was already declining.

My parents ran a grocery store on North Market Street, across from the once bustling Summit Hill Manufacturing Co. A fair number of men in the community were working at the “strippings” as they were called, and many of their wives worked at the manufacturing company or one of the other “dress shops” in the Panther Valley. This was, of course, before these places shut down, and all of work was exported to China, Thailand and other Southeastern Asian nations.

The demise of coal and the garment industry is reflected in the steep population loss in the Panther Valley. In my hometown, for example, the population is only about half of the 5,500 people who were living there when I was a boy.

When the mines went into decline, the men of the Panther Valley were trying to get good-paying jobs at Bethlehem Steel, Mack Trucks Inc. and other industries in the Lehigh Valley.

With the drum beat getting louder every day about how coal is screwing up the environment, I ask myself, “Well, if this is the case, and humanity is on the line, isn’t this a no-brainer?”

Just as so many other things in life, the answer is not as easy as it might appear on the surface.

Even ex-President Donald Trump could not deliver on a key campaign promise to save the coal industry, because the industry has no real future, but politicians, especially those in coal-producing states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois and Wyoming, just can’t come out and admit that coal is on life support.

It appears as if political leaders from these states and those at the national level - Trump included - would rather continue to hoodwink employees, their families and us and hold out hope that some kind of miracle will happen. It won’t.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, has emerged as a fierce fighter for the coal industry, especially because his state has such a high stake in the game. It turns out Manchin’s efforts are not without self-interest. The Washington Post reports that Manchin’s family business has made millions by taking waste coal from abandoned mines and selling it to a power plant that emits air pollution at a higher rate than any other plant in the state.

Manchin’s latest financial filing shows that the family business he helped found and run, Enersystems, paid him $492,000 in interest, dividends and other income in 2020, and that his share of the firm is worth between $1 million and $5 million, the newspaper reported.

I am going to tell you something that will be utterly difficult to believe, but it’s true: There are fewer than 5,000 coal-mining jobs left in Pennsylvania. About 71% of those miners work underground.

In all, the American coal industry employs just 43,000, a skeleton of the once robust industry that had 883,000 employees and led to the development of the Panther Valley and other communities in Schuylkill and adjoining counties.

It was a backbreaking, dirty and unhealthy job, but men - many of them immigrants from eastern and southern Europe - did it hoping that it would give them and their families a slice of the American dream.

Many of these men, many of them smokers, contracted “black lung,” emphysema and other respiratory ailments that cut short their lives. My father-in-law, a miner and a smoker who lived in the New Columbus section of Nesquehoning, was one of them.

As the environmental case against coal-fired generation intensifies, political leaders cling to support of an industry that clearly is no longer competitive. The federal and state governments continue to subsidize this industry, despite the knowledge that its days are numbered and that its continued existence perpetuates damage to our environment that is becoming close to irreversible.

To eliminate coal production, however, involves the upheaval of the employees and their families. Where do they go? What do they do? The answer is equally complicated. For one, there have been successful programs where employees have been retrained and put to work in other industries, but this is not as easy as waving a magic wand. These programs are expensive, they need intense supervision and follow-through, and the employees and their families need to be subsidized while the retraining unfolds.

Make no mistake about it: The transition from dirty to clean energy is here to stay. There is no going back. The leaders of even the coal-producing companies know this.

But the public continues to be sold a bill of goods that King Coal is too important to mess with and to do so will bring near disaster to the communities in which it is mined and to the economy of the nation it serves.

Of course, there will be challenges, but we must wean ourselves from the handcuffs of dirty energy. Nothing less than the salvation of the planet is at stake. And this comes from someone who grew up in the coal region and who loves his hometown passionately, its history and what it owes to coal. I proudly wear the label of “coal-cracker,” but when it comes to a choice between saving coal or saving the planet, this is a no-brainer.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.