It never hurts to check up on what T. Boone Pickens is saying and doing. The Texas oilman, corporate raider, and philanthropist has serious cred, and it's unlikely that he's giving interviews in order to pump up his investments. His portfolio is well known, and, as he says, "There isn't anybody who can talk a commodity market up more than three or four minutes. The fundamentals will take over at some point."

In a recent interview with the Houston Business Journal, he reiterated his view that global oil production has already peaked:

PICKENS: I think you'll see $80 oil before the end of the year. There's no question in my mind that oil has peaked. If you've already peaked, you'll start to decline. Can you replace it? Probably not.

There's obviously a lot of disagreement on this, but Boone's position is worth noting. Moving on to electrical power generation, he voiced concern on natural gas:

Q: Here in Texas we're struggling with our long-term power-plant needs, trying to pick among coal or nuclear or natural gas. I guess you'd pick nuclear to fuel the Texas plants?

PICKENS: Yes. You've got to get nuclear in because you don't have the other fuel to supply it, unless it's coal. You're not going to have enough natural gas. 

You would think that Texas would have access to plenty of natural gas, but Pickens's calculations must show that it won't be enough for a serious ramp-up of gas-fired power plants. Pickens, a stalwart Republican and big fundraiser for presidential contender Rudy Giuliani, has recently endeared himself to greens with plans to build the nation's largest wind farm near Amarillo in west Texas, a burgeoning center for wind energy. 

Pickens summed up his emerging ethos to the WSJ recently:

I'm an environmentalist because caring for what we have is a reality that is going to be on page one a long time. We have got to pay for that, and I think we can do that without damaging our economy."

I think that's a sentiment that will resonate on both ends of the political spectrum.

Spencer Platt/Getty Images News

With announcements of new energy technologies coming out constantly, it's sometimes difficult to figure out which ones are actually worth getting excited about.

A power-plant scrubber highlighted in Tuesday's Financial Times is a case in point. The Sugarland, TX-based WOW Energies has developed a device that reduces CO2 emissions in a big way, the company claims:

Daniel Stinger, Wow chairman and inventor of the technology, says standard scrubbers can remove 50-60 per cent of mercury from emissions, while third party testing has shown his technology removes 85 to 95 per cent of heavy metals pollutants, including mercury. In addition, its pilot projects demonstrated carbon dioxide reductions of up to 85 per cent - not even the original aim.

85 percent CO2 reduction? Wow (no pun intended). Although it hasn't been proven on a large scale, this is impressive. Oddly, the WOWClean results (pdf) have been out since December, yet we're only reading about it now. There has to be a catch. The FT reports that WOW energy hasn't found much interest from utilities:

In the six months since Wow began marketing the technology, [WOW's CFO Martin] Brau has found utility groups have little interest in spending money to reduce emissions unless forced by legislation, preferring instead to "chip away" at emissions as new requirements gradually come into effect."A lot of them simply don't want to know," says Mr Brau. "Unless they are forced to, they won't stop. They have a grandfathered right to pollute."

Could the catch be that WOWClean captures the CO2 so that it can be stored somewhere or sequestered underground (boring) rather than eliminate CO2 emissions through some chemical process (potentially very exciting)?

I emailed Brau to get clarification on this. Brau responded:

What we mean is that the CO2 is converted into a stable bicarbonate, such as baking powder, it is not sequestered as a liquid gas.

This is awesome ... but it's probably unwise to get too excited until more work is done to test the large-scale performance and viability of this technology. In energy, there's always a catch. But definitely keep an eye on this. Power plants account for 40 percent of CO2 emissions in the United States, so progress in this area is crucial to major emissions reductions.

MIKE CLARKE/AFP

For years, dogs have been used to sniff for illegal drugs. Now, in China, humans are soon going to be used as "professional noses" to sniff for illegal emissions while patrolling the southern city of Guangzhou. The noses have been trained by environmental experts to differentiate between hundreds of odors and gauge their threat to human health. Unsurprisingly, a member of the sniffing team has described the work as "quite unpleasant."

The sniffers expect to receive certificates that will officially let them commence their careers as professional noses. The certificates will be valid for just three years, though, because humans' olfactory capabilities tend to decline with age.

The noses should be careful. Earlier this year, two sniffer dogs in Malaysia received death threats from crime bosses after authorities used them to help locate pirated DVDs and CDs (the canines sniffed for polycarbonates used in manufacturing disks). So when it comes to illegal polluters, who nose what could happen?

Want to know how much your consumption habits are contributing to global warming? Climate Counts, a new nonprofit organization, now lets you see how companies rank in the fight against climate change before you go shopping.

On its recently launched website, Climate Counts scores 56 companies from 0 to 100 based on how they measure their greenhouse gas emissions, their plans to reduce them, their stance on legislation, and how fully they disclose these activities. The methodology focuses heavily on public disclosure of activities and policies, so the emphasis is on which companies talk the climate change talk, but not necessarily on which ones follow words with actions.

Canon comes out on top with a score of 77, while Amazon.com, Wendy's, Burger King and CBS find themselves at the very bottom of the climate-friendly ladder. The New York Times reports that Climate Counts gave Amazon.com a zero because researchers could not find relevant data about its role in climate change. Amazon's response? Climate Counts just didn't look very hard. 

I'm not sure what kind of impact the group thinks it can have on consumption patterns, but I highly doubt it'll be convincing die-hard Pepsi fans (score: 26) to switch to Coke (score: 57) anytime soon. At best, these endeavors are good for the embarrassment factor they create. Maybe now, companies at the bottom will feel a need to step up their efforts—or at least make their policies easier to find.

In the last week of May, ExxonMobil's CEO proposed shelving plans to build a natural gas pipeline from Canada's Mackenzie Valley to the existing pipelines in Alberta, which continue down into the United States. The cost projections for the project have apparently shot up, in large part due to rising steel prices.  

If the project ends up nixed or shelved, it could be a rather big deal. According to energy analyst Andrew Weissman, this is the "biggest energy story of the year" thus far. He told MarketWatch:

About 10% of our future natural gas supplies will disappear as a result.... It's like we know there's a hurricane coming into the Gulf of Mexico that will wipe out all the natural gas there. The gas will just sit in the ground."

It's clear the United States will need to import more natural gas. U.S. natural gas production has basically remained flat for the last decade, fluctuating between 511 and 555 billion cubic feet between 1996 and 2006 (PDF). Even if that number rises, it probably won't offset the need for more imports.

Another big reason this story could (or should) get more attention is that natural gas is the main substitute for coal in electricity generation. Replacing coal with cleaner-burning natural gas is probably a good idea as Congress and presidential candidates consider policy options on climate change.

All that said, the talk about nixing the project could just be a negotiating tactic to get more Canadian government subsidies to build the pipeline. The Globe and Mail's initial report on ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson's comments make it seem as though a juicier subsidy package could change Tillerson's mind. 

Soviet Russia was never overly concerned with nuclear waste disposal. For decades, the Soviets simply dumped radioactive materials into the Arctic Ocean or erected temporary storage facilities for such materials. Those facilities are now beginning to age, and are becoming a serious environmental problem. Frighteningly, one of these facilities may even be in danger of exploding.

AFP

Norwegian researchers have obtained an alarming report from Rosatom, the Russian nuclear agency, about a site on the Kola Peninsula, an ore-rich area near the northern border with Norway. Since 1982, 21,000 spent uranium fuel assemblies have been stored there in three concrete tanks right next to the coast. Inside the tanks, large metal pipes contain the rods. Unfortunately, the concrete has begun to leak and allow sea water in, corroding the metal tubes.

Leakage is a problem because spent rods contain many types of fissile isotopes, and salt water could cause them to disintegrate relatively quickly. Essentially, those fissile isotopes will dissolve in the water, creating a radioactive slurry inside the tubes.

This could be dangerous because, in the right conditions, enough fissile material concentrated in a small space creates a lot of heat—the same principle we exploit for nuclear power generation. Uncontrolled, this heat could cause steam to build up in the tubes, eventually leading them to explode. If concentrations of fissile material are high enough, dangerous chain reactions could occur, releasing more intense (and potentially explosive) "bursts of radiation and heat." The risk of such explosions is small— both Russian and Norwegian nuclear officials have accordingly "downplayed the danger"—but still significant given the potential for widespread fallout.

And while an actual atomic explosion is probably impossible in this situation, even steam explosions could send huge quantities of dangerously radioactive material into the environment. Rosatom claims there is no danger of that happening, but given the Russian track record on waste disposal, we should watch sites like this very carefully.

CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP

Today was another big day for the booming Chinese solar industry. Shares of LDK, a solar wafer manufacturer based in China, went on sale today on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO did somewhat better than expected, with shares going for as high as $30 in a flurry of heavy trading. Another highly anticipated IPO, for Yingli Green Energy, is likely to happen later this month. It'll be (at least) the sixth Chinese solar company to raise capital in the U.S. stock markets. 

There's actually a bit of a debate among stock market analysts, however, on just how viable the Chinese solar industry really is. Those bearish on solar point to a worldwide shortage of high-grade polysilicon, which has weakened demand by keeping prices high for several years now. And earlier this week, SolarFun Power, another Chinese solar manufacturer, posted disappointing first-quarter earnings. That put a damper on some investors' enthusiasm for Chinese solar manufacturers, but apparently not enough to ruin LDK's day in the sun.

LDK boosters point out that the company has already amassed a reasonable quantity of polysilicon, and that its fundamentals are solid. Couple that with China's low labor costs,  burgeoning engineering prowess, enormous energy needs, and its environmental crises, and you've got a potential winner to follow other Chinese solar success stories like China SunEnergy. This is definitely a sector to watch. 

© CI-Cambodia/David Emmett

Phnom Penh, Cambodia – One of the world's largest and least studied freshwater turtles has been found in Cambodia's Mekong River, raising hopes that the threatened species can be saved from extinction.

Scientists from Conservation International (CI), World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Cambodian Fisheries Administration, and the Cambodian Turtle Conservation Team captured and released an 11-kilogram (24.2-pound) female Cantor's giant softshell turtle (Pelochelys cantorii) during a survey in March.

Thanks to the nice people at Conservation International for allowing us to use this very cool photograph. 

You've heard of the $100 laptop. Meet the $30 stove/refrigerator/generator combo.

Scientists from a consortium of UK universities have come up with a novel solution for food storage and preparation in developing countries. Using thermoacoustic technology, the team of scientists is developing a device that acts as a refrigerator, cooker, and power generator at the same time, and is powered by biomass fuels such as wood that are locally available. Led by Paul Riley at the University of Nottingham, the SCORE (Stove for Cooking, Refrigeration and Electricity) project has been granted $4 million to develop the device.

So how exactly does it work? Riley explains:

[B]urning wood heats a gas-filled pipe at one end. The gas moves from the hot part, where it expands, to the cold part, where it contracts. The pipe then resonates rather like an organ pipe."

The acoustic pressure waves this creates are then harnessed to produce electricity, so SCORE doesn't need an external electricity source.

For the two billion people in the world who still use open fires as their primary cooking method, this is potentially great news. And considering that 93 percent of the energy generated by these fires is wasted, and the smoke can lead to serious health problems, the device also provides environmental and health benefits. Riley hopes that the stove will be commercially available within four years, adding, "We are hoping to build a million a year after year five - that's the aspiration - and the price target we've set ourselves is between 15 and 20 pounds ($30-40) per unit." He also hopes that ultimately the technology will be accessible enough for the devices to be produced cheaply by local populations.

AFP/Getty Images

There's no doubting the importance and urgency of economic development that meets the needs of the world’s poorest people without harming the planet. In fact, it may be one of the defining issues of our time. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that the world's most important body is handing over the chair of the U.N. Committee on Sustainable Development to ... Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

It's an African country's turn to head the rotating position, and Western efforts to block the appointment have thus been met with criticism by many African countries and rejected by the Zimbabwean delegation. Even if this committee weren't dealing with economic issues, the notion that today's Zimbabwe is fit to lead anything at the United Nations is somewhat ridiculous. But this is a country with 2,200 percent inflation, where the leadership is rationing electricity to four hours a day. That's less than in many parts of Iraq.

Inclusive opportunities for all the world's peoples and nations ought to be at the forefront of the U.N. mission. But so should principled and pragmatic leadership. Apparently the U.N. learned nothing from Sudan, Libya, and Cuba's embarrassing stints on the Human Rights Commission.

PETER PARKS/AFP

As Harry Harding argues in the March/April issue of FP, China has enormous ecological problems that the Chinese government is struggling to come to grips with. It so happens that there's been a flurry of stories lately about how China is supposedly getting more environmentally friendly. A sampling, via the indispensable China Digital Times:

• Is China turning green? by Yale law professor Daniel Esty in Fortune
• Why Tiananmen square could go from red to green, by Jonathan Watts in the Guardian
• Paying the price for a greener China, BBC News
• The China Experiment: inside the revolution to green the biggest nation on earth, by Mara Hvistendahl for Seed
  

No doubt Chinese leaders are becoming painfully aware of the seriousness of their country's mounting pollution problems, but I seriously doubt China's one party system is capable of fixing them. Consider this carefully worded passage in Esty's article:

Just as the U.S. awakened to its environmental crisis in the 1960s, when Cleveland's Cuyahoga River caught fire and Pittsburgh's air began to choke its citizens, China now faces highly visible environmental harms.

But there's a key difference between Pittsburgh and China. China doesn't have "citizens" in the way that Pittsburgh does—voters who can hold politicians accountable when they fail to, say, bring air pollution down to reasonable levels. Local Chinese officials, in contrast, are truly accountable only to the Chinese Communist Party. And based on their comments at the Bangkok summit on climate change, it's clear that top Chinese officials aren't yet ready to bump environmental concerns ahead of economic growth on the priority list. Rest assured, it's a message that will resonate on down the line.

An interesting story in today's Washington Post takes aim at an unlikely culprit in the battle to stop global warming: U.S. women. According to the Post, U.S. men are much more likely to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), which consume less electricity and last longer than incandescent bulbs, than are their female partners:

A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that while women are more likely than men to say they are "very willing" to change behavior to help the environment, they are less likely to have CFL bulbs at home [...] In groceries and drugstores, where 70 percent to 90 percent of light bulbs historically have been sold and where women usually have been the ones doing the buying, CFLs have not taken off nearly as fast as they have in home-improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe's, where men do much of the shopping.

So what explains the gender gap? Energy Star Director Wendy Reed guesses that "women are much more concerned with how things look. We are the nesters." Women are apparently less willing than their husbands to put up with fewer lumens (although the latest CFLs are supposedly just as bright if not brighter than incandescents). But it seems there's also a widespread failure to communicate about this difference in preferences:

The guy typically brings a CFL home and just screws it into a lamp in the bedroom, without discussing it with his wife," [energy efficiency market researcher My] Ton said. "She walks in, turns on the light and boom -- there is trouble. That is where the negative impressions begin, especially when the guy puts it into the bedroom or the bathroom, the two most sacred areas of the home."

I'm curious to know if the CFL gender gap exists even in other countries like Germany and Japan, where far more people use the energy-efficient bulbs. And as couples in these places have gone increasingly green in their light bulb choices, have they also had to learn to communicate better?

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Ethanol-fueled cars will create an equal or even greater risk to public health than those powered by gasoline, according to a new study. Gasoline emissions are estimated to cause at least 10,000 premature deaths in the United States alone every year. Yet ethanol is no panacea, says Mark Z. Jacobson, the Stanford University atmospheric scientist who conducted the study.

Using sophisticated computer modeling techniques to simulate air quality in the United States in 2020, Jacobson found that vehicles fueled by a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (E85) increase atmospheric concentrations of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, canceling out the reduction of carcinogens that are prevalent in gasoline but not in ethanol. What's more, E85 can increase ozone in some areas. And that means ugly smog and the deaths associated with higher levels of ozone. Jacobson projects that widespread adoption of E85 would lead to slightly higher mortality rates in the United States (+4 percent) and especially smog-friendly Los Angeles (+9 percent).

And it doesn't matter, according to Jacobson, whether ethanol is made from corn, switchgrass or other plant products—the results remain the same. So we have yet another reason to be skeptical of the prevailing obsession with ethanol. Well, what should we do? Jacobson highlights alternatives such as battery-electric, plug-in-hybrid and hydrogen-fuel cell vehicles, which can derive energy from wind or solar power. He says, "These vehicles produce virtually no toxic emissions or greenhouse gases and cause very little disruption to the land." 

ELIZABETH GLASSANOS/FP Original

Food waste is becoming so pervasive in Hong Kong that restaurateurs are charging diners for leaving leftovers on their plates:

Customers often order far more dishes to boil in a "hot pot" of broth than they are able to consume, and everything they leave has to be thrown away. That is not just wasteful; it is unprofitable for restaurateurs. One restaurant charges HK$5 (US64 cents) per ounce of leftovers.

"All you can eat" sushi joints also have a problem with diners who pile their plates high and then simply eat the raw fish off the top, leaving the rice. One sushi restaurateur, according to local media, charges HK$10 (US$1.28) per leftover sushi.

Perhaps due to a combination of this all-you-can eat dining culture and unprecedented prosperity, uneaten food is not just a problem for restaurants; it also makes up a disproportionate amount of Hong Kong's garbage. One third of the city's 9,300 tons of daily waste is food, compared to 12 percent in the United States. Although food biodegrades in landfills, it smells foul and emits methane (a greenhouse gas) in the process of breaking down.

And thus Hong Kong's government welcomes restaurants' efforts to penalize food waste as complementary to its own. So far, the city has built a food-to-fertilizer conversion factory and encouraged restaurants to install sludge-producing "digesters" that can "eat" over 2,000 pounds of food a day. But money talks, and it's likely that the new, privately-initiated fines will be the most effective encouragement of all.

Editor's note: This post co-authored by Henry Bowles.