Miners can organise - emissions can't

A couple of posts that I've written have got some attention recently, so I'll try and write follow-ups. In The Consequences of support for Working Class Miners* George takes issue with my post Coal Not Dole:

Those who support the miners at the expense of aggressively confronting emmissions are advocating unmitigated climate change, and they must look the consequences in the eye, and say that they are prepared to accept them as a neccessary consequence of their support for the coal miners.

What I'm unclear about in George's post is who he thinks will be agressively confronting emissions. Is it the government? Is it small groups of activists? I don't think either of those is going to be particularly effective.

It's not that I believe that we should support miners, so I don't care about emissions.** I think the 'we' who aggressively confront emissions will not succeed without miners. Miners know better than most the damage of coal - the first thing it emits onto is miners lungs. Creating a better world is not something we can do to people.

If 'Coal not Dole' are the options, then I'm choosing coal. But if we're building a better world, with better options, then we should be able to do without either.

* Suddenly I'm curious, why the 'Working-class' modifier to miners? Are them some ruling class miners I'm not aware of?

** At this point I should say that I'm not a climate change activist. In fact if I think of climate change for more than 47 seconds I generally get to: "There is no hope, we're all doomed, I might as well just eat chocolate and watch Buffy while I still can."