First, my concern with technical innovation is that it will simply be exploited for increased output. If the process for making widgets is made twice as efficient, people will make twice the widgets and pollute just as much.
Second, in your example of coal being made obsolete by market forces: governments are already skewing these forces with massive subsidies for fossil fuels. We need governments to stop doing that.
Third, bringing new technology to market requires huge investments and risks. We need governments to incentivize and support this development so that it can happen as quickly as possible. Free markets are not some efficient force that just always magically do the right thing when left to their own devices. They are marred by countless modes of failure.
The underlying social and political issues are almost intractable, but they cannot be ignored just because it's too difficult. I don't believe we can simply technology our way out of this.