× Expand The U.S. National Archives Miners at the Virginia-Pocahontas Coal Company Mine #4 near Richlands, Virginia in April, 1974. Since 1990 this coalfield has been on the decline and outmigration has robbed the area of 75 percent of its population.

At the end of July, five thickset coal miners encamped on a set of railroad tracks in the Appalachian foothills near Cumberland, Kentucky, population 2,220. Their employer, Blackjewel LLC, the sixth largest coal company in the nation, had shuttered mine operations in four states, and laid off 1,700 workers.

As the company went belly up, it stiffed some 350 Harlan County miners out of their final paychecks. Out here, in “Bloody Harlan,” where miners harbor a menacing reputation after decades of violent labor conflict, the coal workers formed a blockade to stop trains from exiting Cloverlick Mine 1. They parked their trucks on the tracks, set-up lawn chairs like they were having a backyard barbeque, and refused to leave until they collected their back pay.

Before long, forty more miners and their families, gathered in support of the protest. They’re still holding the line today, even after a partial victory in the courts.

The revolt of these non-union miners lacks the institutional backing of the United Mine Workers of America, the junkyard dog of the American labor movement. Instead, the miners are relying on a loose-knit group of allies for help and assistance. To sustain their immediate needs, they’ve secured donations from churches and local restaurants and even a GoFundMe page.

These efforts have garnered some less-than obvious sympathizers, including Richard Gilliam, a former coal mogul and financier who now runs a foundation that recently donated $1 million to 508 Blackjewel miners, giving them about $2,000 each. Some miners have appealed to President Donald Trump, the man who promised to “get those mines open” just three years ago. His Labor Department has assisted the miners in court by invoking “hot goods,” a controversial measure that freezes the transport of commodities when workers aren’t compensated, but Trump himself remains button-lipped. “A tweet would be great,” said one miner, so far to no avail.

As fossil-fuel workers lose their jobs today, the urgency of what climate activists call the “just transition” becomes all the more apparent. The climate movement’s campaign to move “beyond coal” and “leave it in the ground,” has promised to help miners and coal communities like those in Harlan County survive the changeover.

Indeed, the plan for a “just transition” has become a shared feature of climate groups across the political spectrum and a prominent feature of the proposed Green New Deal resolution. New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez explained back in March that, “in the Green New Deal, one of the things that I advocate for is fully funding the pensions of coal miners in West Virginia and throughout Appalachia because we want a just transition to make sure we’re investing in jobs across those swaths of the country.”

To be sure, some coal miners remain skeptical that the “just transition” is anything but an empty slogan by people they have long been encouraged to think of as environmental extremists. Ever since the first Clean Air Act and state mine reclamation laws of the 1960s, coal managers have waged a relentless public-relations war on the environmental movement.

Back then, the former vice president of the Consolidation Coal Company, James D. Reilly, criticized conservationists as “stupid idiots, socialists, and Commies who don’t know what they’re talking about,” saying, “I think it is our bounden duty to knock them down and subject them to the ridicule they deserve.” The most recent iteration, the so-called “War on Coal,” encouraged miners to stand with their bosses against a hodgepodge of green bogeymen: the feds, Democrats, urban liberals, or anyone who favored even a hint of caution in mass extraction.

Coal miners aren’t anachronistic problems to overcome; they have a crucial role to play in hurrying the transition to renewable energy.

But there’s a fair number of miners, who, if polled, might say they have “no opinion” about climate activists (or at least no hard feelings toward them). One coal miner blocking the train in Kentucky, interviewed by a reporter, expressed interest in coalition-building because “It would be great if a set of jobs came in.” He sounded like a lot of miners in years past who have expressed sincere love of the outdoors and the environment, but are deeply worried about their economic survival in the place they call home. A number of retired miners in Appalachia are now calling for renewable energy jobs to ensure economic longevity.

In the environmental and economic turmoil of the current moment, climate activists have an opportunity to build genuine solidarity with fossil-fuel workers like those on the tracks in Harlan County. That’s the only way to secure a “just transition” now and in the future.

But climate groups can’t treat fossil-fuel workers like unfortunate souls who need help through job retraining programs and largess. Coal miners aren’t anachronistic problems to overcome; they have a crucial role to play in hurrying the transition to renewable energy.

The current blockade, for instance, harks back to an era when coal miners regularly leveraged their strategic position within the industrial economy. A coal miner still holds power, like few other constituencies, to interrupt coal shipments and choke the means of production through strikes and blockades. These direct-action tactics provide coal miners with outsized influence, not only to threaten the profits of individual coal operators, but also to paralyze the larger fossil-fuel economy that runs on their labors.

Today’s fight in Harlan County, like the canary in the coal mine, may be a harbinger of things to come.

This year, coal production hit a forty-year low and, since Donald Trump took office, Chapter 11s have piled up in the coal industry. The collapse in coal markets has no obvious end, and the sorry sight of miners, in frantic public hearings, trying to get something from nothing, has become common, from West Virginia to Wyoming.

Continued job losses and home foreclosures in coal country will surely provoke more outbursts and collective actions from miners in the future. The climate movement has nothing to lose and everything to gain from solidarity and real union with these miners—some of the most historically militant workers in the country.