In the next issue's Think Again: Oil (sorry, subscribers only), the Economist's Vijay Vaitheeswaran, right after he argues that the world still has plenty of oil left to pump, takes aim at the ecos' beloved Prius, reasoning that any car that still takes gasoline—hybrid or not—doesn't solve the world's oil addiction. Remaking the automobile altogether, he says, is the only serious way to wean the world off crude.

In that spirit, FP has compiled a short list of the cars of the future—plug-ins hybrids, diesels, all-electrics—in a special Web-only photoessay. Sure, some of the models still rely on a little oil to get from point A to point B. But they're a snapshot of where the auto majors (and a few start-ups) are heading in the quest to perfect the 21st century car. (Personal favorite: The all-electric Tesla Roadster at right, which goes from standstill to 60mph in a scant 4 seconds.)

Yesterday, Honda's chief executive, Takeo Fukui, took aim at one of cars profiled, the forthcoming Chevy Volt, which GM's Chairman Bob Lutz has said is more important to him than anything he's done in four decades in the auto business. Fukui argued that the Volt's electric motor (which is powered after a certain distance by a diesel fuel engine) is simply not as environmentally friendly as the auto industry ultimately needs to be, and that better, high-performing electric batteries that eschew the fuel engine backup are what's needed. It's clearly just a bit of corporate smack talk, but Fukui's thinking is on the right track. Hybrids are just the first step in what needs to be an auto revolution.

MARK WILSON/Getty Images News

It's not easy defending the Bush administration's delaying tactics on climate change, but U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson made a go of it this morning.

Asked by an aggressive Tom Brokaw about whether Republicans in the U.S. Congress are doing anything on climate change, U.S. Treasury Secretary paused for a second, and conceded dryly that there is a "wide variety of knowledge" on the Hill about the issue.

Asked about a global deal based around binding emissions targets, proposed by Tony Blair, Paulson said, "it just depends on what your expectations are."

Yesterday was my last day reporting from the United Nations. With all of the focus on Ahmadinejadapalooza (more on that later), I didn't get a chance to mention one of the aspects of President Bush's speech that set some tongues a-clucking. Tim Wirth, who heads the U.N. Foundation, had this to say:

This morning, President Bush admonished the UN to ‘live up to its promise to promptly deploy peacekeeping forces to Darfur.’ However, the Administration has requested funding for only 20% of its share of the Darfur mission, and is heading towards a debt of more than $1 billion for UN peacekeeping overall. It is impossible for the UN to ‘live up to its promise’ to deploy peacekeepers to Darfur if nations like the United States fail to pay for the peacekeeping missions that they vote for in the Security Council.

Today, I'm at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers for the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI)—and boy, is it good to be here. For all of the great things about the U.N., the place has a creepy, "New Tomorrowland" feel to it (not to mention the asbestos problem). And with 2,000 members of the press and I don't know how many delegates, the bewildering, maze-like complex of buildings is a zoo. Everywhere you go, there are internal security checkpoints. If your badge is the wrong color, you can forget about gaining access. CGI, based in a modern hotel with no asbestos, operates on a much more human scale, and the staff here bends over backwards to be helpful. I expect the sessions to be much more free-wheeling and interesting, in contrast to the staid official-speak of the U.N. Plus, the wireless actually works and there's free coffee, the fuel that powers the world's journalists. Expect more energetic posts from me today and tomorrow.

ELIZABETH GLASSANOS/FP Original

The coal market isn't as sexy or as global as oil, so it often works outside the media spotlight. But when it comes to understanding how the U.S. energy-security-enviro challenge is shaping up, coal is an excellent place to look because, in America, coal is cheap, plentiful within the country, a huge provider of jobs and megawatts, and a tremendous source of greenhouse gases. 

The global outlook for demand is strong, as Asia's appetite for electricity grows. This year, China became a net importer of coal. As for the United States, part of its energy challenge is improving security of supply — reducing dependence on the understandably dreaded "foreign oil." Making liquid fuels using our own American coal sounds appealing. And perhaps no consumer is more interested in coal-to-liquid (CTL a.k.a. "Fischer-Tropsch") than the U.S. military, which has huge transportation fuel needs and few alternatives to oil (it's kind of hard to build a jet that runs on electricity).

For the coal industry, getting access to the American gas tank would be a tremendous boost, giving it a whole new market outside of power generation and heavy industries like steel. The WSJ filed a must-read report last week, "Coal Industry Hopes Pentagon Will Kindle a Market," that really gets at the key issues. CTL is a huge emitter of carbon dioxide, and the process uses between 5 to 7 gallons of water for every gallon of fuel it produces. But those inconvenient facts aren't dissuading some folks:

The effort nevertheless has some backers at the Pentagon. The Air Force, which consumes the most fuel of the military services, supports using coal-to-liquids fuel. It recently certified the B-52 bomber to run on a blend of Fischer-Tropsch fuel and normal fuel. The Air Force plans to do the same for its entire fleet by 2011. The Air Force intends to buy about 400 million gallons annually by 2016. The service supports legislation that would allow it to sign 25 year contracts for supply, even at historically high prices above $50 per barrel, said William Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics.

"If the legislation helps spur on a market that is necessary, we believe, to ensure our long term national security, we believe it's something that has a lot of merit," Mr. Anderson said.

According to Jeff Goodell, the author of Big Coal, the rise of Wyoming coal is one of the key industry dynamics fueling the CTL push. At 18:05 minutes into this excellent June interview with NPR's Terry Gross, Goodell explains how Wyoming coal, in comparison to Appalachian coal, is easier to mine, makes less of an environmental impact, contains less sulfur, burns cleaner, and requires utilities to spend less on scrubbers at coal fired power plants (but it has a lower heat content, so you have to burn more of it). You can practically "dig [it] out with a spoon" in Wyoming, Goodell says.

In contrast, Appalachian coal has been mined for over a century, and because much of the easy-to-mine coal has been extracted, the coal remaining is in thinner seams and is more expensive to extract. So part of the push for CTL, Goodell says, comes from eastern coal states, for which CTL could be a huge boost. Sen. Byrd of West Virginia has likened American coal to "acres of diamonds under our feet." A large federal backing of CTL hasn't come yet, but keep your eye on it. China, like the U.S. Air Force, is in the process of building CTL capacity. And we know how much U.S. legislators like to keep up with China.

LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images

After 1,300 years, China has decided it will no longer engage in "panda diplomacy" by giving away its giant pandas in order to improve its relations with foreign countries.

"We will only be conducting research with foreign countries," a state forestry administration spokesman said. It appears that the last panda "gift" was made to Hong Kong to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the island's handover to China.

The policy change is likely to add to China's fattening wallet. Now, the country will rent out its adorable black-and-white furballs for as much as $1 million a year on 10-year leases—with a bonus if the panda gives birth.

This could be a good thing. Given the explicit research and conservation aim of the new program, we may see more accountability for what happens to pandas after they go abroad. Plus, it won't affect the recent APEC deal between Australia and China to bring two giant pandas to Australia's Adelaide Zoo, which will be part of China's 10-year lease program. Adelaide Zoo chief executive Chris West believes the high cost of leasing pandas is "perfectly understandable." He adds, "Our interest as a zoo has been to support pandas in the wild, and any contribution that is made will do that." If zoos and nature reserves are willing to pay the price, it's likely they'll want to protect their cuddly investments as carefully as possible.

Back in June, I wondered just who might have plonked down $300 million for an Airbus double-decker private jet for his own personal use. Airbus wouldn't peep about the purchase, which occurred during this summer's Paris air show.

Today, Le Figaro outed Russian oil baron Roman Abramovich as the mystery buyer. At 239 feet, Roman's new A380 private jet isn't quite as long as the soccer pitches his Chelsea club plays on in the UK, but it's not far off. And if the world's 16th-richest man is going to be flying around in an 840-seater with a few of his billionaire pals, it just might make him the most emissions-unfriendly person on the planet. I mean, he'd pretty much have to buy the entire rain forest to go "carbon neutral" on this one.

One other item of note: Abramovich, a man of impeccable taste, dubbed his 86-meter yacht the "Ecstasea". Perhaps his new A380 will be called the "Airgasm"?

UPDATE: According to Mr. Abramovich's spokesman, Le Figaro's report yesterday was inaccurate and Mr. Abramovich is not the mystery buyer of the private A380. That means the title of world's most polluting man is still ripe for the taking. Clues: The buyer is not American, European, or Roman Abramovich. We'll keep you updated.

Chicago economist Steven Levitt recently conducted a blog-based experiment to test how people from different academic backgrounds explain economic phenomena. Levitt posed the question, "Why are we eating more shrimp?" (warning: due to the number of comments, this link may crash your browser). He then asked readers of his Freaokonomics Blog to post their answers and academic backgrounds in his comments section. No cheating allowed.

I thought the likely answer was rather obvious—the rise of shrimp farming has pushed down global prices for shrimp—but perhaps that's because I once did some research into the environmental problems associated with global aquaculture. In any case, the results of Levitt's little experiment are fascinating, and they offer some support for the theories of Shane Frederick, the MIT marketing professor whose inquiry sparked Levitt's interest:

As Shane conjectured, non-economists (i.e., anyone who didn’t major in economics) mostly thought that we are eating more shrimp because of demand-based reasons (e.g. the movie Forrest Gump, a rise in the number of vegetarians who will eat shrimp, etc). Fifty-seven percent of non-econ majors gave only demand stories, versus 24 percent who gave only supply stories. The rest had a mix of supply and demand explanations.

As for the real world consequences of shrimp farming, here's something to think about. Shrimp farming is one of the major reasons why mangrove forests around the world are dying out, particularly in Asia. So what? Well, mangroves, which are concentrated in tropical and subtropical latitudes between 32º N and 38º S, offer protection from extreme weather events such as the tsunami that did so much damage in Southeast Asia back in 2004.

What's more, mangroves are a prime link in the ocean's food chain, and they can filter pollution from land-based agriculture. But shrimp farms, if they aren't properly designed and sited, tend to destroy mangrove habitat. And as delicious as those bargain prawns might be, they won't do you much good when the next tsunami hits. When you think about it, maybe farm-raised shrimp isn't so cheap after all.

As the so-called "war on terror" rolls on, the balance between security and public oversight remains tense. Recently, this tension surfaced when the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revealed a series of previously undisclosed accidents that took place over the past few years at Nuclear Fuel Services, one of only two U.S. companies that are allowed to process highly enriched uranium (HEU) for nuclear fuel. In 2004, citing national-security concerns, the NRC deemed as "Official Use Only" all documents relating to Nuclear Fuel Services and the other HEU processing company, BWX Technologies, and sealed them away from public view.

iStockphoto.com

As a result, several "abnormal occurrences" remained secret, including one particularly dangerous incident involving a spill of 9 gallons of HEU in liquid solution on March 6, 2006. When in liquid form, HEU must be handled with particular care to prevent creating a critical mass. If enough of the liquid collects within a certain volume, a dangerous, uncontrolled chain reaction can occur. Usually, such reactions will not result in a nuclear explosion, but they do release significant amounts of radiation. Processing facilities have extensive safeguards in place to prevent this, but accidents do happen.

This time, the spill did not turn out to be serious, ranking a lowly 2 out of 7 on the IAEA's International Nuclear Events Scale. (With a 2, there is very little threat to the surrounding area or even to the actual facility. Three Mile Island was a 5. With a 7, you're in Chernobyl territory.)

It's worrisome, however, that the NRC kept such a basic safety breach secret for so long. Rather than examining documents to see which truly contained sensitive information, the NRC just hid everything. And interestingly, the NRC did not fine Nuclear Fuel Services for the violation. Instead, a performance review was initiated. In past years, the NRC fined companies for violations like this and made the events public. Replacing fines with performance reviews is fine, but the NRC should bring back public announcements. To its credit, the NRC at least admits that "the pendulum maybe swung too far" towards excessive secrecy.

Potential terrorists might benefit from knowing the exact details of an accident or the security changes implemented after it, but there will rarely be much harm in disclosing the incident itself. In some cases even the old security procedures that led to such accidents could be safely disclosed, if they were no longer being used. And in general, increasing the transparency of the NRC's oversight role can spur greater vigilance and hopefully help prevent more dangerous "nuclear mishaps" in the future.

What if instead of airline miles, cash back or hotel stays, your credit card paid you back in carbon offsets?

That's exactly what GE's new "Earth Rewards" card will do. One percent of your purchases go directly toward buying carbon offsets, which supposedly finance eco-friendly projects around the world designed to limit greenhouse gases and stop climate change.

It's a nice idea, but part of the problem with climate change is that we will never be able to buy our way out of it. Encouraging consumption in order to offset just one percent of that consumption is a futile effort at mitigating environmental issues. Using the GE Earth Rewards card is probably better for the environment than redeeming rewards for carbon-emitting airline flights. Still, the whole concept remains a bit ironic.

Not only do rubber duckies make bath time lots of fun, they tell us a lot about the environment, too.

Fifteen years ago, 29,000 bathtub toys—ducks, frogs, turtles, and beavers made of plastic, actually—fell off a container ship in the central Pacific Ocean.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been tracking the toys' movement around the world and has found that about a hundred of them drifted on oceanic currents to Alaska, north to the Bering Sea, across the North Pole, alongside Greenland, and into the North Atlantic. As recently as 2003, one of the ducks washed up on the shore in Maine and one of the frogs landed in Scotland. The container of toys aren't the only ocean flotsam that Ebbesmeyer has tracked. He's also tracked 80,000 Nike shoes that were also lost in the Pacific, 34,000 hockey gloves, five million Legos lost off the coast of England, and survey stakes that have drifted in the ocean from Japan. As Ebbesmeyer writes in today's Wall Street Journal, there is way too much junk, especially plastic junk, in the world's seas:

Most of it does not biodegrade. It just breaks down into ever smaller pieces, to the size of confetti and, finally, dust. Fish, birds and other marine animals eat this pseudo-planton and pass it up the food chain. Our world-wide litter is poisoning the seas, the creatures within them, and ultimately, ourselves."

If you spot one of the ducks on your shore, now bleached to white and imprinted with the words "The First Years," submit a photo and note to Ebbesmeyer's Web site, www.beachcombersalert.org. 

Why does the environmental movement fête celebs who go around spouting do-gooder environmental rhetoric even as they travel in gas guzzling private jets and suck up endless watts of energy air-conditioning their L.A. McMansions? Apparently, it's because they're Democrats.

That's what Jeff Bercovici over at Radar recently discovered. When he sent an article highlighting the inconvenient truth that folks like Leo DiCaprio and Al Gore too often live environmentally unfriendly lifestyles over to the editors at the influential enviro-site Grist,  they dismissed him for "carrying right-wing water." What a bizarre response. Why would they assume Bercovici was motivated by politics? Could it be that, within the environmental movement, what matters most is not whether Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio, or Barbara Streisand actually live the virtues they extol, but simply that they're not "right wing"?

MARK WILSON/Getty Images News

I decided to conduct an unscientific test of the theory on Grist's own Web site. As a case study, I picked former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, who is not just right wing in his politics but decidedly hawkish when it comes to foreign-policy matters. He also happens to be a self-described "tree-hugger" who lives in a solar-powered farmhouse (complete with solar-thermal panels for hot water) and drives a Toyota Prius and hybrid Lexus SUV, which he uses to haul farm supplies.

A Google search for "Jim Woolsey" on Grist.org returned six articles; "James Woolsey" gets 16. A search for "Al Gore" returned 4,200. A search for "Leonardo DiCaprio" returned 286 articles ("Leo DiCaprio" adds another 38).

Woolsey lives a green lifestyle. So why isn't Grist giving him as much ink as Gore or DiCaprio? Perhaps because his primary motivation for calling on Americans to go green is to increase national security, decreasing dependence on foreign oil while increasing pressure on repressive regimes in the Middle East. That's not necessarily environmentalism for environmentalism's sake.

It shouldn't make a difference, Woolsey tells Rolling Stone. "It doesn't matter what the principal motivation is," he says. "It's just two different sets of reasons for wanting the same thing." Sorry, Jim, but the environmental movement doesn't seem to agree. Besides, you don't look as pretty as Leo on the cover of Vanity Fair.

AFP

Trash—a munnezza, as they call it in southern Italy—is invading the streets of Naples. And though the city council just removed an impressive 4,000 tons of it, the International Herald Tribune reported recently that "egg shells, fermenting teddy bears, garlic, hair that looks human, boxes for blood pressure medicine, [and] scuzzy wine bottles" are still a common picture around town. A few enraged Neapolitans have protested by setting the trash on fire, and black-dressed elderly Italian women are blocking the railways in order to get the attention of public authorities.

Foreigners are amazed. Italians are ashamed.

It's gotten so bad that on Monday, the U.S. embassy urged tourists to stay away from Naples and its nasty smells. And Brussels is threatening EU penalties against Italy for allowing a health and environmental hazard to fester.

This is hardly the first time Naples has nearly drowned in its own refuse. In fact, it happens every summer. But why? Here are two clues:

1. There aren't enough dumpsters around town, but the city council hasn't bothered to add any in years.
2. When the official dumpsters are full, trash-deluged citizens must pay for illegal dumpsters managed by the camorra, the Neapolitan mafia.

Surely Passport readers can put two and two together here. I bet you thought that Tony Soprano's job in the waste-disposal business was a cover, right? We Italians know that garbage is the game, baby.

China Photos/Getty Images

Over in Anhui province, the government evacuates nearly half a million people away from the surging Huaihe River.

And in neighboring Henan, authorities worry about the health risks from an estimated TWO BILLION RATS that attacked crops near Dongting Lake. The rats had been living on islands in the lake, but rising floodwaters sent them into the surrounding 22 counties, where they have been causing all kinds of trouble.

I'm tempted to say that this is just another day in China, but even for the Middle Kingdom, this is crazy stuff. More than 66 million Chinese people have been hurt by floods this summer. And knowing what we know about the water quality in China's rivers, it's even more frightening. The brain boggles.

Perhaps you recall the "Northwest Passage" from your seventh grade social studies class. Until the phrase showed up on the AP newswire and at the center of Canada's aggressive new defense policy, I had almost forgotten about this long-sought-for shortcut to Asia that swallowed up so many European explorers.

Usually frozen, the Passage has historically only been passable for a few days every summer. The onset of global warming has raised its strategic value, since all the ice in the world might be gone soon. In addition to a transcontinental shipping route that's 2,480 miles shorter than going through the Panama Canal, it turns out those northern straits host bountiful fishing stocks, valuable minerals, and—get this—25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves.

In the manner of any self-respecting oil producer (especially given the recent IEA report of an oncoming oil supply crunch), Canada has begun an aggressive campaign to protect what the Canadians say is rightfully theirs. Despite his country's history of turning a blind eye to U.S. usage of the Passage, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has forthrightly asserted Canadian sovereignty over the arctic waterways:

Canada has a choice when it comes to defending our sovereignty over the Arctic. We either use it or lose it. And make no mistake, this government intends to use it. It is no exaggeration to say that the need to assert our sovereignty and protect our territorial integrity in the North on our terms have never been more urgent.

What's more, Canada has recently hoisted the maple leaf over Hans island, a small, barren rock less than a thousand miles from the North Pole. Countering Danish claims of sovereignty over the island, which isn't far from Denmark's Greenland, many Canadians have even called for a boycott of Danish pastries.

First PM Harper won't talk to Bono, and now he's on the warpath, hoping to reap the rewards of global warming. Better keep an eye on this fellow.