I must've missed this when it came out, but take a look at Sam Jaffe's year-old piece in the Washington Monthly, "Independence Way." Is it possible that we're closer to alternative energy than we think?

Two new technologies, however, have the potential to make ethanol fuels much more practical. The first is a method for producing ethanol not from corn kernels, but from the plant's stalk, roots and leaves, known as cellulosic material... [A] second technology could make cellulosic ethanol the basis for a viable hydrogen transportation system...

Very interesting. The hope is that cellulosic ethanol can become energy efficient—i.e., it doesn't take more energy to make than it gives out, as traditional ethanol does—and cheaper than gasoline, so it wouldn't require lavish subsidies. Both seem possible. (Also promising: it seems that the cellulosic ethanol could be made from switchgrass, which could be harvested in areas unsuitable for food farming, so we wouldn't have to burn all our edible corn.) Meanwhile, last week Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel unveiled the world's first ethanol-hydrogen fueling-station in Illinois, which probably didn't work along the lines of what Jaffe describes above, but promising all the same...