The Utah Mine Collapse: was it necessary?

I want to preface this post by A) commemorating it to all of the miners trapped in the coal-mine in Utah and B) acknowledging that I know virtually nothing about the logistics behind mining coal in this day and age. I would not like this to thought of as an attack on those who endanger their lives every day mining a substance that many, like myself, rarely even realize is still in every day use.

I witnessed a train passing bye with several beds full of black coal, and I innocently asked Jess if people really even used coal. I said this out of a belief that humanity had realized that this fossil fuel was a rapidly declining resource and had been able to all but dissolve its use. Thinking back, I realize just how naive it is to think this as I spend day in and out in buildings that have may very well be using coal in some capacity. My question is this: Why are we still reliant on a rapidly dwindling source of fuel, and if we still need it why are we endangering people's lives in its procurement?

The technology of today is so far advanced beyond that of a hundred years ago, where many of the horror stories about working in coal mines seem to come from, that I wonder how many of these same horror stories could possibly still exist. Is there no way to avoid the need to send men down into the mines, inhaling coal dust day in and out, and hacking at the cold stone for a wage that I am sure is not enough? It just seems to me that there should be technology out there that should make this unnecessary. It is my hope that the lives endangered in Utah and everywhere that coal mines exist could be made unnecessary if more effort were put into the development of safer methods to extract coal. Or, and this is a radical theory I know, effort could be expended to develop ulterior methods of energy!!!!