Tracking isn't popular because of the cost to the environment. Whole towns and areas have moved out in certain places where fracking has polluted their drinking water. Also since tracking began in Oklahoma their earthquakes went from two a year of may 4 or there about to two a week of a greater magnitude.
The best way to obtain fuel from coal based material is to mine it and first extract the gas to be used as fuel. This is how town gas was made in the UK before no the sea gas took over. The coal after the gas has been extracted (A skilled operator can extract gas from the same piece of coal up to five times) is then still use able and is known as coke. Coke is quite enviromentally friendly to burn. The way people used to live was fear more enviromentally friendly.
Incidently, an ordinary average petrol car was said to have over 80% of the entire pollution produced in the production stage of the vehicle (I believe it was 82 or 83%) and due to the poisionus gasses released to make modern batteries, battery electric and hybrid cars are around 10 times more polluting then an average petrol car in their lifetime, assuming the batteries last the lifetime of the vehicle.
So, even without catalytic converters, an old petrol car kept on the road for as long as possible is the least polluting car to have and own despite having a high milage worn engine! Not only this, such old cars can be converted to run partly from water to greatly increase their efficiency. (Electricity passed through water separates the molecules to produce hydrogen which is safe as one does not need to store it in a tank (Stored hydrogen is dangerous) and as it is produced while on the move, is not dangerous and vastly increases the efficiency of the fuel (Petrol) if it is mixed via simply feeding it through the air intake of the car. The exhause side of pure hydrogen is water! The things to be aware of is hydrogen is far more explosive then petrol so one needs to tame it down a bit, and also petrol contains lubricant additives as well as naturally being oil based while hydrogen is water based.
So if we care about the environment go back to the old ways of gas made from coal and can also be made from wood, and then later burning the end product for those who are not in a gas area. (In the UK, most electric was produced from burning coke so it was a win win situation environmentally speaking).