Plain and simple: the cars of the future will be powered by whatever is practical and cost-effective.

People are losing their jobs and their houses right now. They don't have the luxury of worrying about ozones holes or carbon footprints. They need somthing that gets them home from the grocery store or back and forth from work.

Sane people will not be spending $32,000 for new hybrid (or anything with alternative power) that takes 20 years to pay back the initial cost by fuel savings.

Talk about pollution can get a bit silly since we have stopped forest fires almost completely. When Europeans arrived in North America (Australia also), fires were burning across the continent. Massive carbon emissions if you want to look at it that way. The Central Valley (as it is now known) in California was known by native people as "land of 1000 smokes".

If carbon being dumped into the atmosphere is really important, it is down greatly from ancient times.