Alternative energy is the hope for America. It will reduce dependence on foreign oil. It will clean up the air. It will provide millions of jobs. To this end, the much-anticipated “green dream team” is about to take office. Change is on the horizon.

Or is that a giant windmill?

This is the “new energy economy.” Barack Obama made his most decisive break yet with the Washington establishment last week, the Guardianreported, by naming a prominent Al Gore supporter as the new energy secretary and anointing a former Clinton-era Environmental Protection Agency head as a new climate czar. Obama promised to make his “new energy economy” the defining issue of his presidency.

“We have heard president after president promising to chart a new course,” he said. “This time has to be different. This time we cannot fail.”

“[M]y administration will value science …. We will make decisions based on facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action.”

Stirring words.

And with stirring words, President-elect Obama laid out plans for a massive economic revival that he claims will create 2.5 million “green” jobs. “We can create millions of jobs, starting with a 21st-century economic recovery plan that puts Americans to work building wind farms, solar panels and fuel-efficient cars,” he said. Obama will also modernize the electricity grid, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and preserve national resources.

A tall order—but a noble-sounding one.

So America is poised to embark on what may become the biggest energy infrastructure revolution in the history of the world—it will have to be if green energy is going to make a dent in America’s fossil-fuel addiction.

Fossil fuels, the unloved dirty energy sources, go far beyond oil. Petroleum accounts for approximately 40 percent of America’s energy consumption. Natural gas and coal provide the United States with another 46.5 percent of its power. Nuclear energy (not a fossil fuel) produces 8.4 percent of the mix.

Only 6.8 percent of America’s energy comes from renewable energy sources.

So you see the challenge we are facing if we are to green America up. The U.S. will need to develop a veritable ocean of renewable energy.

But not all renewable energy is considered green energy. For example, the green lobby generally opposes hydropower development because it floods land. Greens are also against biomass energy production because it often involves burning wood and producing wastes. Environmentalists are growing in opposition to biofuels such as ethanol because these fuels not only use food crops, but they also promote greater land tillage and deforestation.

That leaves only three main options for Obama’s green energy dream: geothermal, solar and wind power.

This presents a big problem. None of these options can live up to the hope that the Americans are being led to place in them.

Geothermal power plant construction can take many years before electricity production results. From obtaining a permit to completing construction, it generally takes a minimum of five years to build a plant, but it can take much longer. So the ramp-up time for a national push could be significant—especially considering how many facilities would need to be constructed.

America currently has geothermal power plants pumping out electricity in every state of the union. But many are old and are producing decreasing amounts of electricity. Many may need to be replaced soon. At the same time, if all the plants already in the planning and permitting stage—around 100—make it into production, America’s geothermal capacity will double. That’s good, but unfortunately, geothermal energy currently accounts for 0.35 percent of America’s energy consumption. Even doubling America’s geothermal capacity only ups the share of energy production to barely over half a percent. So geothermal energy by itself is probably not the solution for America’s energy problems—at least not over any reasonable short- or medium-term time frame.

That is probably a big part of the reason Barack Obama, in his green energy economy press conference in Chicago last week, specifically mentioned solar and wind power. The lead times to construction can be much shorter, and you don’t have to spend years exploring for geologically favorable formations.

But a society based on solar and wind power is probably a fantasy too. And one that Americans have fallen for before.

After the opec oil embargoes of the 1970s, the price of oil skyrocketed. Politicians repackaged themselves as proactive visionaries. On June 29, 1979, President Carter called for a “national commitment to solar energy.” He set a goal of producing 20 percent of the nation’s energy from various solar sources by the year 2000. Congress declared war on fossil fuels, passing the Energy Conservation Act of 1978. The media was filled with stories of solar-heated houses and multitudes of solar-powered devices. Scholars wrote articles about the economics of solar energy and how the days of oil were over.

What was the result? The full complement of solar energy collection equipment built since 1974 produces about 0.08 percent of American energy—8 parts in 10,000. Not even a tenth of 1 percent of our energy comes from solar power!

Wind power falls into a similar range of energy production. The combined power-generating capacity of every single windmill (and there are thousands), every photovoltaic solar cell on every rooftop, and every thermal solar energy plant across America equals 0.4 percent of America’s energy consumption. That number is astounding for its smallness. Despite 30 years of Carterism, taxpayer subsidies, mandates forcing energy utilities to use alternative energy, and the hundreds of billions of dollars invested so far, green energy isn’t even on the meter.

If America wants a green energy economy, it is going to have to spend. And spend. And spend like never before. President-elect Obama’s plan to designate $15 billion a year over 10 years will barely scratch the surface of what is needed. If America wants an energy revolution, taxpayers are going to have to pay and pay and pay like never before, because trillions of dollars’ worth of energy infrastructure in America will need to be phased out and replaced.

Here is the scale of what an energy revolution entails. As of 2001, California had 3,200 huge windmills covering vast mountainsides and desert passes. “All together, they produce—at a rare full wind—about 300 mw,” University of Connecticut Physicist Howard C. Hayden notes, “which is about one quarter as much power as a moderately large nuclear power plant produces, and is less than 10 percent of the electricity the small state of Connecticut consumes.” So even if the state of California, the nation’s leader in wind power, quadrupled its wind-generating capacity, it would be the equivalent of building just one nuclear power plant.

Moreover, private enterprise won’t make the switch to green power willingly. Why? For the same reason the free-market economy has passed on the idea for decades so far: It doesn’t make economic sense.

That is why the Carter energy revolution was such a failure. It mostly boils down to cost-benefit analysis. In a world of international competition, the environment takes a backseat, and green energy is an economic albatross.

Electricity produced from solar and wind is more expensive than electricity produced from coal and natural gas. Solar energy costs about three times as much as coal. And wind power, while not as expensive as solar, has two additional major disadvantages. Initial construction costs are much higher than traditional power plants, which means it takes a lot longer to earn a return on investment. Also, wind power is unreliable. When the wind doesn’t blow—and sometimes it doesn’t for days—the lights go out, and you don’t get paid.

So as a general rule, the only time these green energy sources get built is when the government intervenes—through mandates, subsidies, taxation and other means—to make green energy competitive. Unfortunately, government intervention always costs money. Taxpayers and businesses pick up the tab through higher energy bills and higher tax rates. And, in some cases—as with ethanol production—higher food costs too.

And higher costs lead to other problems.

If businesses were required to pay the real cost for green energy, many would become uncompetitive. Many strategic industries such as refiners, metal fabricators, steel producers, chemical manufacturers, and pulp and paper producers require abundant cheap energy. And you can guarantee that countries like China and India—nations that have fewer environmental qualms—would take full advantage of higher costs in the U.S. to attract any new industry. Make energy more expensive in America, and even existing industry could well close up shop and head overseas to countries that embrace cheap energy sources. Then America would be spending even more money importing products made by foreign companies. And how does it help the economy if the new 2.5 million green energy jobs are swamped by unintended job losses in other sectors?

It boils down to this: Higher energy costs reduce the efficiency of the economy. Any way you look at it, that means fewer jobs and a lower standard of living in America.

Choosing to pursue clean energy for moral or environmental reasons is one thing, and some may consider it worth the cost to Americans to live with less air pollution. But pretending that it can eliminate our fossil fuel dependence or solve or improve our economic problems is, at best, wishful thinking. At worst, it’s a dangerous lie.

The fact is, with current technology, green energy cannot run America, or the world, at the level it runs on now. That is what the real science says. That’s what real scientists like physicist Howard C. Hayden, author of The Solar Fraud, say.

We live in a world set up to run on fossil fuels. Green energy just does not provide the return on investment that coal, oil, natural gas or nuclear power does.

America needs leaders that will tell it like it is—not give false optimism.

As Ron Fraser wrote yesterday, “At the time of Britain’s greatest crisis, Sir Winston Churchill did not promise the British people any groundless ‘hope,’ or any empty promises of ‘change.’ He promised them nothing more and nothing less than ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ And the British responded with set jaw and stiff upper lip. For two whole years under Churchill’s leadership, Britain held the tyrant at bay until America, as President Roosevelt said, was literally bombed into the Second World War.”

Unfortunately, “Seventy years later there are no Churchills, no Roosevelts.”

America has billions of tons of coal—over a quarter of the world’s reserves, and enough to last hundreds of years at current consumption rates. America has the fourth-largest-reported natural gas reserves in the world. America also has abundant uranium and hydropower resources. And although America consumes more oil than it pumps out of the ground, it is the third-largest oil producer in the world. In other words, America has cheap domestic energy to use if it wants to.

Of course, clean energy for all nations is something that should be aspired to. And someday that will come. But that’s not the point here. The point is that pipe-dream promises of energy and economic salvation through “green jobs” is a dangerous delusion. It fails to get to the heart of the matter and garners only temporary political gain.

The heart of the matter has to do with where America’s blessings came from in the first place. It is not blind happenstance that America finds itself in possession of so many energy resources—fuels that have powered America’s ascent to national greatness. The true Source of those energy blessings is where real hope lies—not in chasing solar panels or giant windmills.

If you want to know the only hope for America, read the book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.