Coal is Back

Yet a new article, this time by TIME, is telling us about the future possibilities of coal. It's again referring to Montana's governor Brian Schweitzer, as told here, and it's telling a little bit about the history of coal. It also claims that with rising prices for oil and natural gas, coal-to-liquid technologies will be a way to reduce the dependance of the United States of America to oil-exporting nations.
I think it's very interesting, that governor Brian Schweitzer (guess what, he's a Democrat) has

campaigned aggressively all year to launch such a project

so you may hope, that he will have success and maybe some large plants for synthetic fuels will be built.
Another TIME article states, that even more alternatives to oil and gas are raced for.
Did I mention, that Germany is already doing it?