Notice: I did not mention air quality.
Notice: modern scrubbers are rather efficient
Not to mention that coal is one of those things that I am all for us getting rid of. But not to ban other countries from using. Spending 20-30 years bootstrapping themselves to alternative methods very well may be better than building up a massive population base because they couldn't get themselves to the point where birth rates drop.
Not to mention that half of the alternatives to coal have been EPA-d (is that a verb? Now it is) to the point where "dirty" fuels are the best option from a straight economic point of view.
A better example for your comment might be nuclear power. Where a large chunk of the reason behind why nuclear power is not more widely used is public (panicked) response to radiation concerns. Even though burning coal ends up with a larger radiation dose per MWH. Even though the alternative tends to be coal or oil fired power plants. Even though nuclear power (with suitable reprocessing) is the cleanest general-purpose form of power generation we have. (And yes, this includes "green" energy. Solar/wind require rare earth elements / batteries / etc, geothermal is highly regional, hydro causes issues with fish/etc, biomass is sooty, etc)
