It's extraordinary how inventive one can be with ethanol right now.

A premium in the oil price of somewhere between 10 to 15 dollars a barrel reflects this heightened anxiety.

The North Sea was supposed to run out in the 1980s. Then in the 1990s. And now production is still on-line.

In the mid-1980s, operating problems took [nuclear] plants off-line so often that, on an annual basis, they operated at only about 55 percent of their rated total generating capacity. Today, as a result of several decades of experience and an intense focus on performance ... nuclear plants in the United States operate at over 90 percent of capacity. That improvement in operating efficiently is so significant in its impact that it can almost be seen as a new source in electric power itself.

Even Silicon Valley investors have put well over a $1 billion in new energy technologies.

To meet the energy challenge requires the most important energy of all - human creativity. That's the real prize.

Clearly, the Chinese need the resources, but I don't think they want to clash with the industrial world which happens to be the market for their goods.