And Then There Were None: Kellingley Colliery closes

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I don't know why newspapers are reporting this as "no more coal being produced domestically". There are still a bunch of opencast mines open.

Obviously this isn't a shock nor an immense tragedy on the scale of what happened in the 80's and 90's, but still sad, partially for sentimental reasons (though I dislike the coal industry) and partially on the parts of these 450 men and their dependents.

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Yes, that's ehy I think it is dangerous to overromantice the industry on account of its radical and important history to left-wingers. That powerful union tendency only came about via Newton's Third LAw: the unions were only as powerful as management were odious. Working conditions were (and are, in countries where the pit mines still run) outright criminal. Even in this relatively small and modern mine that just closed, there have been 17 deaths - it's not a nice job even at the best of times. The coal industry worldwide has been horrendously greedy and has effectively killed itself off: producing oversurplus to feed a China that "would always grow", shredding its workforce to the extent it lost its monolithic appeal (coal execs binding themselves to the Republican party alone was a method straight of short-term profit, long-term stupidity on their part). It's not really a question of if coal is collapsing, its how should the death be managed. Perhaps environmentalists and coal workers could team up and attack open cast mines (like the gigantic one that infest Australia)?