As terrible as this sounds for the environment I have to agree with you, from an energy security standpoint coal is indispensable, China has massive reserves (170 billion tons) and even in the unlikely scenario that they start dwindling Russia has even larger coal reserves (178 billion tons). And even in the worst case scenario where new deposits do not become viable and coal use remains at the current levels (4-5 billion tones per year) the reserves won't be depleted until the 60's. Until Fast Breeder Reactors, Thorium reactors and reprocessing facilities can be built at scale there is little incentive to fully phase out coal from the energy security standpoint.
Sources:
They estimate that undiscovered coal reserves are 10 times the actual reserves.