As a young news junkie, I for years wondered what it was that Archer Daniels Midland did that made it important enough to sponsor Meet the Press and Face the Nation alongside legendary corporations like General Electric and financial mammoths like Smith Barney and Merrill Lynch. ADM's commercials didn't promote a product that could be purchased by the general public, but the ads were vague as to reasons why it should be invested in as well -- it was like ADM was more of a charity than a business ("Supermarket to the World").
Only later did I understand that the targets of ADM's campaigns were not individual consumers, but politicians who watched the shows every Sunday. ADM was insisting it was the be-all and end-all to all sorts of "problems" that government claimed to be able to solve, gave gobs of cash to politicians, and every Sunday showed sixty second promotionals showing the pols how they could sell soybeans and corn as panacea to the electorate. Finally, it all paid off with ethanol getting its toehold in the market as "cleaner" and "greener" although the green is mostly in the form of greenbacks.
Now, after many years of mentioning it in speeches, President Bush is still holding on to the heretofore fruitless notion that sawgrass could help break the nationwide addiction to oil. In retrospect, I am not surprised he would buy it.
It's really easy to "buy" a solution that involves no cost and no tradeoffs and is far enough away that noone can prove it's a stupid idea. The green movement has thrived on that kind of magical thinking for decades.