And let's not forget the most effective and most democratic technology for addressing energy dependence: conservation.

Does anyone else find it bizarre that we are looking at such primitive and inefficient solutions to our energy problems?

Sure it's bizarre, but look at what happens to politicians who advocate sensible energy research (namely, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter): they get ridiculed as tree-hugging hippies.

Our best hope of breaking our dependence on hydrocarbons is fusion energy (the hot kind, not the cold kind). We're still a long way from a workable fusion reactor, due in part to the very low level of research money the US puts into it. We lag far behind the rest of the world in fusion research, and that's holding the science back globally (the US spends more on basic science than any other country). The saddest part is that, if the Republican Congress hadn't pulled the US out of ITER (the international effort to build a working fusion reactor) in 1998 over the objections of the Clinton administration, we'd be at least somewhat closer to petroleum independence today. We sort of rejoined ITER a couple of years ago with a commitment of a piddly amount of money, but that was after six wasted years when we could have been participating. Workable fusion is still a long way off (ITER estimates commercial availability in 2045), but we should have been closer to it than we are now.

Merely finding more creative ways to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere doesn't seem like much of an energy policy to me.

Other renewables (such as solar, wind, geothermal, and tides) could provide 25% or so of our total energy needs, and those technologies already exist. They just need to be produced on a large enough scale that manufacturing efficiencies could kick in and bring the costs down. Tax breaks, federal startup grants, and research dollars could help that effort along. However, that would take actual leadership, and it would take someone with the spine to tell the oil industry to take a flying leap. I don't see many politicians (of either stripe) willing to do that.

--Socialist With A Gold Card

Gosh!  I think I agree with Les, as well as SKB.  Even the first hybrid, the Insight, was pretty decent, and they've come a long way in a short time.  And they've still just scratched the surface.  Seen this one? 

I've cooled off the biodiesel kick.  It either uses waste product like french fry grease, which is fine but wouldn't really go very far and which already has other uses in industry--forcing current grease buyers to buy virgin product, or it uses petroleum-heavy agriculture processes and land, as SKB well noted.  And diesels of all kind, even the upcoming pretty cool Bluetecs, are dirty relative to the cleanest hybrids.  Biodiesel fills a nice temporary niche, but is no big step toward making us energy independent, IMO.

Ethanol from corn (and hydrogen too), I fear, are more false solutions.  Corn has the same problem as soybeans for biodiesel.  Hydrogen has huge hurdles, including the inability to be piped or distributed, because it's too light.  And no one knows how it could be made.  It can be thought of as a storage medium, little more--not a solution.  Corn is an all around big industry scam.  IMO.

Cellulostic ethanol is another story.  If some minor breakthroughs could be made in the conversion of fast-growing junk weeds like switchgrass to ethanol, then ethanol would not have to be petrol or land intensive.  The CO2 emitted when burned would be balanced by its absorption in thecarbon cycle.  Even Bush's SOTU speechwriter was right about that.  (IMO.)  CBT and I might even be in agreement there!