As a side note, there's also been talk about turning coal into diesel.

This is already being done. In South Africa, to name one country. For political stability and independance, it is in many nations' interest to secure their energy resources. Using coal to produce diesel is a very lossy (energy-wise and in account to CO2 and sulphur emissions) and a bit expensive process, but for many nations, especially those with big coal resources, it's still worth it as they're securing their energy.

The current coal resources are likely to withstand a thousand years draining at the current pace. This can be compared with the estimated 50 years (that also includes all the oil we know about but still is too expensive to harvest) for oil, so if you want to keep driving your diesel, there is no worry resource-wise.

However, it is likely that the current pace cannot continue as the greenhouse effect grows stronger by the day and the CO2 percentage in the atmosphere has by far exceeded its natural levels. To stop the atmospheric CO2 percentage at a country such as Sweden's target level, we cannot burn more fossil fuels than we have oil, and that means no coal burning at all. We don't have an energy crisis coming up, but we do have an environmental disaster growing worse by the gallon.

It should be clear that I strongly concur with the other posters noting that the USA need a pollution tax for its gas. I say we should let this country be the land of the free and not the land of the ignorant. It's of greatest importance that the USA bring the emission levels down as the country accounts for 23% of the world's total emissions.