No, mining is actually critical to the state and region, specifically coal, specifically bituminous coal, which isn't used for power generation, but instead in

No, mining is actually critical to the state and region, specifically coal, specifically bituminous coal, which isn't used for power generation, but instead in applications that need to be much hotter than what other fuel sources can easily obtain, like steel manufacturing, ~70% of which uses coal blast furnaces. And while you might want to replace those furnaces with something else, there really isn't a great way to do that. Most of them are already running and are going to need to run another 10-25 years before they're replaced in order to pay for themselves. You can't just shut them off, because then you won't have steel and you do need steel for civilization to keep running smoothly. So what you're left with is trying to make hydrogen cheap enough to replace the coal furnaces and make it worth the extra R&D time required to get your foundry producing in-spec material with a different fuel source, which means their processes need to be better with the new fuel as well. If that sounds like it'll take decades to happen, well yeah, you're right, probably decades to even start happening, so we need to keep mining coal, and, it'd be a very good idea to get young, bright minds involved, because the mining process is, by my estimation, ripe for automation, and if you want to directly reduce the human cost of mining in general, robots is how you do it, and that's also a goal worth pursuing given the number of people die every year digging in the dirt, not just in the United States, but worldwide.