What Germany can teach the US about quitting coal

While the Trump administration has tried to revive the dying coal industry, the German government set an exit date and made a plan to help coal communities survive.

In Lusatia, there is a saying: “God created the beautiful landscape, and the devil put the coal underneath it.”

For generations, this region in the former East Germany depended on coal for jobs and stability.

Coal companies bought up villages and fields and cleared them to make way for vast surface mines, because coal was more valuable than real estate.

Almost all that…