What the Coal industry wants is even more federal handouts. We already give them a ton of money to keep going on the grouds that it's a transition economy and a bridge for the US economy. But the Coal Industry is really damn greedy as a whole.
Even with high profile failures like Solyndra, in general green energy runs at a fraction of the cost. This of course hurts workers, because the labor involved is less well compensated as part of that cost reduction. However, as far as I can tell we're already turning the corner to where (for _generation_, ignoring environmental costs), solar and wind already outperform coal on a cost basis.
People who want to preserve bulk coal generation do so for ideological reasons. From a more "green" perspective, there are more important things we should be doing with our coal and natural gas then burning them to heat water.