Hopefully, coal mining will cease to exist before all the coal is burned. There is much harm in mining and burning coal, and even well-organized nuclear energy is vastly superior as an energy source.
In the 1960's there were still a few "gyppo" mines left around Buckhannon, WV, where I lived, where family groups and other non-union tiny companies still used only the traditional equipment to pull out a few tons a day. No one does this anymore, I hear.
The machines they use today are far more efficient and one operator can do the work that it took dozens to do in the 1940's.
But still, too many people die in mines,and the land is ruined for generations, if not forever, by mountaintop removal.
Coal mining will go the way of whaling, if we are lucky.