On Sunday the Republican former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wrote in the New York Times that man-made climate change is “the challenge of our time,” and called for a federal tax on carbon emissions, and last week on Capitol Hill four former administrators of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Republicans all, told the Senate that the U.S. must take action on climate change. The four were Christine Todd Whitman (EPA secretary under George W. Bush), William Reilly, (for George H.W. Bush), William Ruckelshaus (Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan), and Lee Thomas (Ronald Reagan).

Even as many in the Republican Party continue to cast doubt on the science linking human activity to global warming and oppose legislative or administrative carbon caps, Ruckleshaus testified, “We believe there is legitimate scientific debate over the pace and effects of climate change, but no legitimate debate over the facts of the earth’s warming, or over man’s contribution.”

“We have a scientific consensus around this issue. We also need a political consensus,” Whitman urged, as coal miners, who packed the hearing, listened. They had come to protest the new EPA plan to cut carbon emissions from existing U.S. power plants 30% by 2030 from 2005 levels.

Today, coal, our dirtiest fuel, generates the largest share of the nation’s electricity, 39% in 2013, and so it should come as little surprise that the new EPA rules are a hot issue in coal mining states where this powerful industry supports many jobs. Pennsylvania, which ranks fourth among all coal-producing states, is no exception. Here, the industry directly employs more than 13,000 workers and generates an additional 23,000 jobs in indirectly related support businesses. Coal’s direct economic contribution to PA’s economy is $2.1 billion.

In Pennsylvania’s 2014 governor’s race, coal and coal jobs are a major issue. Earlier this month. Pennsylvania’s Republican Party claimed that Gov. Tom Corbett’s Democratic opponent, Tom Wolf, was “waging a war on coal.” Party chairman Rob Gleason declared, “Barack Obama and Tom Wolf will put Pennsylvania’s coal jobs at risk no matter the impact on Pennsylvania.”

The truth is that demand for U.S. coal hit a 63-year low in 2013, and even before Obama became president or Tom Wolf a candidate, coal has been in a long slow, terminal decline. The causes are geology and the markets (cleanenergyaction.org/2014/06/04/geology-and-markets-not-epa-waging-war-on-coal/). More than one report contends that what remains of U.S. coal today is buried too deeply to be mined at a profit (www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Peak-Coal-Will-the-US-Run-Out-of-Coal-in-200-Years-Or-20-Years). On top of that, add these factors: cheap fracked natural gas is abundant and the cost of renewable energy is declining. All of this leaves the top three U.S. coal companies operating in the red.

The handwriting is on the wall. As big coal declines, so do the numbers of jobs it supports. Writing in “The Coming Decline and Fall of Big Coal” (www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/the-coming-decline-and-fall-of-big-coal-20110928), Rolling Stone opined that the future for coal producing states depends not on preserving the industry, which it called a “relic of the past,” but on states’ ability to “re-invent their economies.” We agree. We believe that Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial candidates should address the following questions raised in the Rolling Stone article:

“How do we move beyond coal? How do we bring new jobs to the coal fields and retrain coal miners for other work? How do we inspire entrepreneurialism and self-reliance in people whose lives have been dependent on the paternalistic coal industry?” If coal’s days are numbered, these should be the issues to focus on in the political debate.

Today, a majority of Americans support setting higher emissions and pollution standards for business and industry and for imposing mandatory controls on CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases (www.gallup.com/poll/170885/smaller-majorities-favor-gov-pollution-controls.aspx). If this is the case, it is time for these same Americans to support those elected officials who will take the necessary steps to make this happen, whether this be to break the stalemate in Washington or to make clear the citizenry’s wishes in races like the governor’s race in PA.

As former EPA administrator Whitman said last week in her Senate testimony, “There are Republicans that believe the climate is changing and humans have a role to play. They just need some political cover.”

To this EPA administrator Reilly, pointing to efforts by some states and corporations, added, “There is a lot happening on climate. It’s just not happening in Washington.”

The outcome of PA’s gubernatorial election may also determine whether anything happens in Harrisburg.