The coronavirus has ripped through Poland’s coal mines, where men descend deep underground in tightly packed elevators and work shoulder-to-shoulder to extract the source of 75% of the nation’s electrical power. Of Poland’s more than 36,000 reported COVID-19 cases, about 6,500 are miners — making them nearly a fifth of all confirmed infections in the country, even though they make up only 80,000 of the country’s population of 38 million. The virus hot spots, centered in the southern Silesia region, have paralyzed an already-troubled industry, forcing many to stay home from work and triggering a three-week closure of many state-run mines that are only now reopening. It is one more blow that the pandemic has dealt to the global coal sector, already in steep decline in much of the world as renewable and other energy sources get cheaper and societies increasingly reject its damaging environmental […]