Bush knew this full well when invading and occupying Iraq; Cheney himself said that "Deficits don't matter."  The US government could use dollar hegemony to spend its way into lavish alternative energy arrangements, if it so desired.  Doing this, though, would reveal the dirty secret of dollar hegemony, as well as the dirty secret of alternative energy (that in many if not most of its incarnations it doesn't amount to that much of an alternative after all when compared with the relative economic ease of burning 85+ million barrels of oil per day).  Being an elite is about keeping secrets, about using the paths of least resistance to stay on top, and about keeping the public in the dark.  Better that "alternative energy" remain a "possibility," so that the public can place its hopes in the future of the existing system (which doesn't provide them with such things).

Biofuels are realistic in light of the Federal government's already-enormous subsidies to big agribusiness to grow huge surpluses of corn (i.e. Zea Mays).  Ethanol made from corn is the object of a path of least resistance, then; it merely justifies what they're doing with Archer Daniels Midland out in Washington DC.  Too bad its energy return on energy investment (ER/EI) is a paltry 1.4.

Once again: what's unrealistic (ecosocialism) actually gives us a shot at a decent future.  Alternatives don't.