How Germany closed its coal industry without sacking a single miner

Hans Mohlek stood at the gates of the Prosper-Haniel coal mine in the Ruhr Valley in the west of Germany on a warm summer afternoon earlier this month, looked up and wept quietly.

Activists climb into the Garzweiler lignite mine in
Germany on June 22 as part of a protest against coal mining.

The mine closed last December and Mohlek was among the last workers to leave. But what moved him so much on a recent visit with a handful of journalists was not just end of mining at Prosper-Haniel, but the end of a way of life that it represented.

Mohlek understood, he said, that the industry was no longer sustainable, but he missed the camaraderie of the mines.

Read the story from The Age by Nick O’Malley - “How Germany closed its coal industry without sacking a single miner.”