"And what is the Bush strategy? Let's go to Mars. Hello? Right now we should have a Manhattan Project to develop a hydrogen-based energy economy — it's within reach and would serve our economy, our environment and our foreign policy by diminishing our dependence on foreign oil. Instead, the Bush team says let's go to Mars. Where is Congress? Out to lunch — or, worse, obsessed with trying to keep Susie Smith's job at the local pillow factory that is moving to the Caribbean — without thinking about a national competitiveness strategy. And where is Wall Street? So many of the plutocrats there know that the Bush fiscal policy is a long-term disaster. They know it — but they won't say a word because they are too greedy or too gutless."

It's "let's go to the Moon, then Mars." And there isn't a hydrogen based energy economy. Energy comes from only two sources- the Sun or Nuclear [since the Sun is a nuclear reaction- it's really just one source].
There simply is not enough chemical energy on this planet for long term sustainablity [chemical being orginally created from the energy of the Sun and stored in finite reserves]. There is only about 4 choices. 1) make a lot more nuclear reactors. 2) harvest in much larger scale the energy from the Sun. 3) Get lucky and discover new means of getting energy or gaining couple order of magnitude more efficent with energy. 4) kill billions human beings and revert to an animal existance- in other words commit cultural suicide.
Opening the Space frontier will lead to various solutions of 1-3 variety, and is the safest and only real option if you want long term solution and you economic growth and freedom.
The EDGE is Space.