COTTBUS, Germany — On a Sunday in September, at the moment when part of the nearby coal-fired power station went dark for good, 600 people lifted white miner’s helmets from their heads and placed them on folding chairs in the main square in Cottbus, an industrial town in eastern Germany.

It was a silent protest to mark the number of jobs lost.

“You have to think that every one of those places represents a job, an income that an entire family depends on,” said Mathias Felsch, a 26-year-old whose father and grandfather both worked in the coal mines. “When you see it like that, it really is a whole lot.”

Even so, for Germany, it is not nearly enough.

If the country is to meet its commitment to the Paris Climate Accord — to reduce carbon emissions by 80 to 95 percent by 2050 — it must also address the economic and social impact on the roughly 22,500 people whose jobs depend on coal.

Increasingly, for Chancellor Angela Merkel it is a question of wavering political will in the face of mounting challenges, including from the far right, in eastern regions where a bulk of those jobs would be lost.