Some segments from an editorial in yesterday's LA Times:

By and large, it isn't a lack of technology that keeps the nation so dependent on oil. It's the lack of will to use it. Engineers have produced a basket of new technologies for making cars burn less gasoline, yet fuel standards for passenger cars in this country haven't changed in more than two decades, and fuel economy has barely budged.... Advances in solar energy have made it less expensive and more reliable, yet only California is making a significant bid to exploit the power of the sun.
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Bush also talked about investing in zero-emissions coal plants. Yet, after a former EPA administrator said the technology existed to reduce mercury pollution at coal-fired plants by 90% within a few years, the Bush administration issued far weaker regulations.

GW's solution is never to implement or encourage the use of what is already available, but instead to conduct more research. It's a stall tactic that on the surface sounds good to most Americans. (How can you not like more research?) Unfortunately, such proposed funding is inevitably cut to shreds -- and no one is the wiser.