[jyl]

For the most part, "tree huggers" have always backed solar and wind. Not nuclear, but that is slowly changing.

The forces that have slowed development of most alternative energy technologies, as well as discouraging conservation, are the oil, gas, and coal industries, and their allies like the US auto industry.

Check the federal budget - add up the incentives and subsidies for alternative energy, and compare to those for oil, gas, and coal. I did this for sammy in another thread - alternatives get a far smaller sum than the oil, gas, coal industries.

Look who has fought against higher MPG standards for the past 20 years. Not the environmental lobbies, but rather the auto companies who preferred selling high-profit, low-MPG trucks and SUVs.

Who lobbied for tax incentives to buy SUVs? Not the environmentalists.

To think that the environmental movement is responsible for the US' current dependence on oil (and gas and coal) reflects a disregard of reality. (Except, as I said, for the under-use of nuclear energy.)