Giving Compass' Take:

• Pacific Standard addresses a new study that finds that being honest about the decline of coal from underlining factors, increases support for training and relocation of coal miners.

• How can funders help training programs for people whose jobs are in jeopardy? Can we drive the coal industry workers to a cleaner and greener power industry?

• Here's an article about the benefits of retraining coal workers for solar power.

Simplifying the story of the decline of coal—and blaming it entirely on environmental regulation—is harming coal miners in the United States.

That's the finding of a new study, which surveyed local policymakers in Colorado and Utah on their support for just transition policies. The researchers hoped to discover how to persuade politicians to protect the miners as the economy transitions away from coal—and found that how you talk about the issue affects the outcomes.

Oversimplifying the story of coal's decline did more harm than good, they found, while a candid conversation about the varied and complicated reasons for this trend bolstered support for policies to help coal miners assimilate into a new, cleaner society.

To date, much research has been devoted to the economics of this shift, but there's been less work examining the politics of the transition.

Read the full article about the decline of coal and coal miners by Sophie Yeo at Pacific Standard