Too many “alternative fuels” are just 21st century alchemy.

Alchemy was a wide ranging subject, but it is best known for the search for how to turn lead into gold. While that may seem ridiculous today, it’s not as moronic as it at first seems. Both lead and gold are dense, malleable metals. Lead can even take on a shine. Without basic atomic theory, there’s no way to know that they are both elements and therefore immutable in non-nuclear reactions.

But the heart of the quest was, in the end, a search for the “trick.” There was some “trick” that would let you turn lead into gold, and transform your life into one of fame and riches.

This belief in the “trick” has lived on long after alchemy was dissolved by modern chemistry (and that minor branch of physical chemistry known as “physics”). It lives on in get-rich-quick schemes and easy weight-loss plans.

And in a lot of alternative fuel proposals. Recent reddit submissions that have gotten some momentum include one to use boron to fuel our cars, and another that proposes aluminum. Both proposals have the same flaw–how do you get the boron and aluminum in the first place?

But those kinds of proposals gain attention and support because they buy into the “trick” ethos. The “trick” is to use something other than oil–as long as we do that, we’ll come out ahead!

Energy comes from one place and one place only: nuclear fusion. Every energy source you can name can eventually be tracked back to nuclear fusion, either occurring inside a nuclear plant, or some star. People need to stop worrying about new “sources” of energy. There’s only one. It’s just a question of how efficiently you convert that energy from the primal source into one you can use.

And forget about freakin’ cars, people! The majority of energy you consume is not the gasoline you burn in your car. It’s all the electrical appliances, computers and various toys in your home. Don’t believe me? Go buy a gasoline-powered generator and try to run your home on it with one tank of gas. A tank of gas probably lasts you almost a week in your car. It won’t last a day running your house.

Efficient electricity with minimal environmental impact is the goal. Once you have that, the rest is simply a straight-forward problem of how to covert that into a usable form for any application you may have.

Give up on the alchemy of “alternative fuels.” Don’t be fooled by the use of exotic materials, or big words, or good-old-fashioned PR bullshit like “The hydrogen economy.”

Repeat after me: “Efficient electricity with minimal environmental impact.” If the solution someone’s trying to sell you doesn’t solve that problem, they’re wasting your time, energy and money.