[xbmcuser]

Coal requires manual labour and mining so even without environmental regulations it's expensive. In the US coal use decrease had very little to do with environmental factors most of it was because fracking brought in cheap natural gas and pushed coal out.

[jhallenworld]

Its does, but you should see the machines they use for coal mining these days, particularly in Wyoming. A giant strip mine seems to require like 20 workers, but with giant trucks and excavators.

Even for underground mines, check out the massive longwall mining machines they use- it's kind of astonishing. They pretty much take all the coal.

I think this is lost in the political talk about protecting mining jobs- the main original competition is more efficient mining operations.

Anyway, it really says something that natural gas and solar are cheaper than coal given this context.

[fragmede]

You should see this one! https://youtu.be/azEvfD4C6ow

It's a bit dated (completed in 1978) and cost approximately $100 million. At one point it was the heaviest land vehicle, clocking in at 13,500 tons. It's since been succeded, but this bucket-wheel excavator needed only five people to operate. Those five people could mine 240,000 tons of coal[8] or 240,000 cubic metres of overburden (rock/soil on top of the coal) per day. That's 2400 coal wagons!

After totally tapping out all of the coal at the Tagebau Hambach mine, in 2001, it took a crew of 70 together to move it 14 miles to the next mine. This move cost 15 million German Marks.

(Just watch the linked documentary.)