All indications point to the fact that the coal industry has been overtaken in the past five years by the increased availability of cheap natural gas, along with the dwindling amounts of good mineable coal in West Virginia. Even if Romney had won and swore off all they pollution-reduction regulations Obama has been pursuing recently, the coal industry would be in increasingly dire straits in the coming years. Energy market forces, and not regulations, are killing coal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/15/the-coal-industry-would-be-in-decline-even-without-obamas-policies/ 
