Michael Conti/AFP/Getty Images

A cursory search for Sarah Palin's foreign policy credentials comes up with, well, nothing. It seems that John McCain figures he's got that avenue covered, and has picked Palin to please the conservative base, add some youth to the ticket (she's 44), and reach out to female voters.

More importantly for McCain, one of Palin's strengths may be energy. She's in favor of drilling in ANWR, but has been careful to consider environmental concerns. An interview from July reveals some potential Republican talking points on energy independence:

Alaskans are frustrated because there is opposition in Congress to developing our vast amount of natural resources. We want to contribute more to the rest of the United States. We want to help secure the United States, and help us get off this reliance of foreign sources of energy."

Later, she even comments on the vice presidential speculation, and once again brings up energy:

I think that any kind of national profile, if there is any elevation of that, it's for Alaska itself. People are looking up here (and saying) we need you as leaders for energy policy. We have a willingness to develop responsibly and supply the rest of the United States, and that's why we are being looked at. I just happen to be in a position of leadership where I get drawn into that."

She can boast about standing up to big oil, having won a state tax increase on oil company profits. But, like McCain's summer gas tax holiday, she's been prone to gimmicky energy strategies, such as a botched plan to offer $100-a-month energy debit cards to Alaskans.

As governor of Alaska, she hasn't had anything to say about national security. Her oldest son will deploy to Iraq next month, which puts her in the same position as her new rival, Joe Biden. Other than that, her only statements have been vague offerings of support for Alaska's national guard. And I don't buy the argument that because Alaska borders Canada and Russia, her experience as governor should count for something there.

I think it's safe to say McCain will handle national security for the ticket. He'll use Palin's credentials on energy to hammer away at a message that served Republicans well over the summer -- more drilling.

Sure enough, McCain's official statement seems to follow this exactly.

Republican House Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter rips "Beijing George" Bush in a memo being passed around Capitol Hill:

Today, in his final term, the wildly unpopular President George W. Bush boarded Air Force One bound for the Beijing Olympics and a meeting with his chum Hu Jintao, the dapper ruler of a nuclear armed, communist dictatorship. ... Perhaps our Compassionate Conservative-in-Chief will bring our absent Democrat Congress some 'Made in (communist) China' souvenir t-shirts: 'Bush went to Beijing and all I got was this lousy five week, paid vacation.' "

McCotter wants President Bush to call Congress back from its August recess to vote to expand offshore drilling. Na ga ha pen. As the White House explained, there's no way the House Democrats would allow a vote anyway. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is hoping to run out the clock and get an energy bill more to her liking next year. The GOP obviously senses a political winner, never mind the dubious case for more drilling. But Pelosi's got the gavel.

Short answer: yes.

The longer answer is provided by Anthony Rubenstein in the LA Times:

Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens is pushing a national campaign to make the U.S. "energy independent" through wind power and vehicles that run on natural gas. His blitz of TV ads featuring his own down-home voice has picked up a lot of admiring news coverage. To date, Pickens has yet to explain whose dime will pay for this.

Well, Californians can clarify exactly whose dime it will be: Ours. Along with being the country's biggest wind power developer, Pickens owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a natural gas fueling station company that is the sole backer of the stealthy Proposition 10 on California's November ballot. This measure would authorize the sale of $5 billion in general fund bonds to provide alternative energy rebates and incentives -- but by the time the principal and the interest is paid off, it would squander at least $9.8 billion in taxpayer money on Pickens' self-serving natural gas agenda.

The initiative deceptively reads like it's supporting all alternative-fuel vehicles and renewable energy sources. But a closer read finds a laundry list of cash grabs -- from $200 million for a liquefied natural gas terminal to $2.5 billion for rebates of up to $50,000 for each natural gas vehicle.

Pickens's ideas may have some merit -- at least the wind part anyway -- but his motives deserve much more careful scrutiny. Pickens shouldn't be getting a free ride (I'm talking to you, Reuters).

Cue the "hot air" jokes.

The United Nations plans to go casual for the month of August in a bid to cut back on electricity use. The idea, inspired by a similar initiative in Japan called "Cool Biz," is that you can turn down the air conditioning when everybody isn't wearing wool and stuffy ties:

The campaign calls for raising the thermostats in most parts of the U.N. Secretariat building from 22.2 C to 25 C [77] and from 21.1 C to 23.9 C [75 F] in the world body's conference rooms.

The initiative would save some 2 million tons of steam during the month of August, or the equivalent of 300 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, [a U.N. spokesman] said.

I love this quip from David Malone, a former Canadian ambassador:

If the rise in the temperature could cut back on the interminable negotiations running late into the evening for often disappointing results, then the outcome of the initiative would be a very good one."

If it works, the U.N. plans to ask its employees to bundle up in the winter. Now if they can just take care of that smoking problem...

NELSON ALMEIDA/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the recent biofuel backlash, there is one place still singing the praises of ethanol. It's estimated that Brazil has cut fuel costs by 30 percent since switching to fuels based on sugarcane -- an agricultural commodity that the country produces in droves. And the country hasn't just saved money from its biofuel habit: it has been turning some profit too, exporting several million tons of its crop to the United States, Europe, and even Japan this year and last.

Brazil's happiness with the ethanol boom underlies an important point about biofuel production: namely, that a regional or country-tailored approach works best. For a nation with a high production of sugarcane -- which packs more than five times the energy of corn and hasn't resulted in major environmental degradation -- it's understandable why biofuel is so popular and promising.

The sugarcane situation in Brazil isn't without its shortcomings: some sugarcane workers face slave-labor conditions, while some worry that their jobs will be replaced by more mechanized cane-cutting. But sugarcane production is an overwhelming boon for Brazil, and other countries would do well to learn from it's success -- and to benefit from it themselves.

The U.S. could step up its imports of cheaper, greener Brazilian fuel rather than continuing to subsidize domestically produced corn-based ethanol. The anti-biofuel crusaders could also stop lumping together Brazil's sugarcane with other "bad" ethanols so that countries like the U.S. will continue to lower trade barriers. That'll be a sweet deal for everyone.

The Rolls-Royce brand is most firmly associated with ultra-luxury cars, but its engineering wing, Rolls-Royce plc, is also actually the second-largest maker of airplane engines in the world. Now, the company is diversifying even further, with plans to set up a full-fledged nuclear division to "manufacture equipment and provide advice to governments on their atomic energy programs."

Rolls-Royce has been supplying safety instrumentation and control technology to France's nuclear reactors for some time now, and it also has nuclear clients in the United States, China, and the Czech Republic -- creating a separate nuclear division is likely part marketing and part expansion. Since the company projects an almost 70 percent increase in the value of the civil nuclear industry by 2023, it's no surprise that it would try to leverage its unique skills and experience to cash in on the purported "nuclear renaissance."

It is surprising that the article explicitly mentions decommissioning (of aging nuclear plants) and cleanup (of plants and other nuclear sites) as potential moneymakers. Companies that deal in nuclear reactors and related products usually focus on the potential for profit in new nuclear plants and a large expansion in the use of nuclear power. Decommissioning and cleanup will become increasingly prominent issues as the world's current nuclear fleet ages, and often responsibility for such problems is laid at the government's doorstep.

Hopefully, more private entities will see fit to focus on concerns like these in the future -- and if we must have new nuclear power plants, we might as well make them Rolls-Royces.

SABAH ARAR/AFP/Getty Images

Baghdad's streets are looking a bit brighter, thanks to a little help from solar power. The Iraqi government has started installing solar-powered streetlamps to improve nighttime security in the country's capital, where an insufficient grid system has long failed to provide enough night light. Plans call for 5,000 of the sun-powered streetlights to be installed in Baghdad, as well as 1,000 more for each of Iraq's 18 provinces.

Iraqi officials are pumped about the new lights, which have already allowed some businesses to stay open later. Aziz Shimari, a spokesman for the Electricity Ministry, said that more people "are likely to go out at night."

But its unlikely that a few thousand solar-powered streetlamps, which still often rely on gas-powered generators to supplement their less-than-bright light, are going to shore up major security problems. Nor do they get to the heart of the country's power woes. Since Saddam's fall, Iraqis have been snatching up electronics and appliances, putting pressure on the nation's already shaky grid system. Demand still outstrips supply, and many Iraqis end up paying a pretty penny for generators and other power alternatives.

The U.S. government is pitching in with almost $5 billion to help the country's electricity infrastructure, even putting up bullet-proof lights around Baghdad, Fallujah, and other major cities. But the United States refused to undertake bigger solar-powered projects because of their prohibitive cost.

As for the new solar-powered lights, they might alleviate a little stress on the national grid -- but not without bringing their own share of problems. Desert dust and grime prevent the photovoltaic solar cells from functioning properly, and extreme heat reduces a panel's lifespan. Solar-power might be a start, but Iraq will need total energy security before it can get the real street security it needs. That means a bigger effort to improve the national grid system, and not just piecemeal -- albeit environmentally-friendly -- efforts.

On a ridiculously early flight this morning, I finally got around to finishing the Sunday New York Times and noticed this little gem in the lead story in the Business section, a sweeping look back at how the United States failed to prepare for today's oil crisis:

Mr. Helms, of course, would be Sen. Jesse Helms, the long-serving senator from North Carolina, who died early Friday, some two days before the paper hit newsstands. The NYT's excuse? The section went to press on Thursday. Egg, meet face.

David McNew/Getty Images

There's no question airlines are hurting right now. The price of jet fuel has shot up more than 80 percent since 2007, and carriers are now charging for services that were once included in the ticket price.

But did you know that airlines are actually cutting back on fuel to save money? IEEE Spectrum blogger Tekla Perry found that out the hard way when his Continental flight to Newark, New Jersey, had to make an emergency pit stop at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York.

It so happens that Continental has made more "minimum fuel declarations" than any other airline, meaning that its pilots have more often notified air traffic controllers that they may need to land in a hurry. Perry cites a remarkably unsubtle October memo sent from management to pilots that reads, "[A]dding fuel indiscriminately without critical thinking ultimately reduces profit sharing and possibly pension funding." Perhaps a little more critical thinking is needed in the board room?

MARCEL MOCHET/AFP/Getty Images

To avoid haggling with "unstable regions and unfriendly regimes," U.S. President George W. Bush recently called for an expansion in domestic oil production to fill the United States' "short run" oil needs. Part of that call involves exploring new areas of supply, such as the Outer Continental Shelf (sections of U.S. coastline) and parts of ANWR (the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge).

But how quickly can we actually pump out the needed "short run" supply from these places? It can take from three to 10 years from the time the decision is made to explore to actual oil delivery, according to OPEC.

Of course, the time required to produce oil depends on where the oil is and how difficult it is to reach. For instance, drilling in deep water, like in the Gulf of Mexico, can take longer for technical and financial reasons. U.S. companies will likely incur some added expense in trying to reach the undersea oil -- there is a global shortage of deepwater drilling ships equipped to do the job, and each one costs a pretty penny (i.e. several hundred millions of dollars) to construct.

According to OPEC, oil exploration alone, which involves surface-mapping and test drilling, costs "tens or hundreds of billions of dollars." Hundreds of billions of dollars better spent on developing new energy technologies, perhaps?

And what about the controversial ANWR drilling? That'll take about 10 years to bear fruit, two or three of which will be spent just collecting necessary leases and paperwork. Even if that timeline holds and the wells start producing a decade from now, peak production isn't expected until the 2020s. At which point, with any luck, the United States will have started to wean itself off its most enduring addiction.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Much has been made about the close ties between U.S. President George W. Bush and the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. But recent comments by Saudi King Abdullah regarding the recent rise of oil prices sound less like Bush and more like a certain other politician:

The king spoke of the "selfish interests" of speculators as a primary reason and urged the gathered ministers to "rule out biased rumors" and to "reach the real causes for the increase in price."

Sound familiar?

For the past years, our energy policy in this country has been simply to let the special interests have their way -- opening up loopholes for the oil companies and speculators so that they could reap record profits while the rest of us pay four dollars a gallon."

That was Barack Obama on Sunday. It looks like even if the Democrats win in November, the White House and the House of Saud will still get along just fine.

Good stuff today from Clive Crook:

The US does not know whether to tax energy or subsidise it, promote domestic oil production or forbid it, treat ExxonMobil and Chevron as champions or pariahs. So it does all of the above.

I should note that both Barack Obama and John McCain are incoherent on this point. As the New York Times dryly observes, Obama favors ethanol subsidies, "some of which end up in the hands of the same oil companies he says should be subjected to a windfall profits tax." As for John McCain, he seems not to understand what cap and trade means.

Deep thought: The new, more commercially viable electric cars like the Th!nk Ox sure are neat, but how do you charge them if you live in the city and park on the street?

PETER PARKS/AFP/Getty Images

The biggest winner from the Kyoto protocol, the 1997 treaty that requiries participating countries to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions?

That would be China, Fiona Harvey reports for the Financial Times:

China has been by far the biggest winner from the Kyoto protocol, receiving tens of billions of dollars in investment to finance low-carbon technology. Last year, 73 per cent of carbon credit projects certified by the United Nations under the protocol were based in China.

The next-biggest shares of the carbon pie went to Brazil and India, with 6 percent each, while the entire continent of Africa captured just 5 percent of U.N.-certified carbon credit projects.

What's going on? Under Kyoto, developed countries can meet their carbon targets partly by investing in emissions-reduction projects in the developing world. And China, as Harvey explains, produces a great deal of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs, greenhouse gases produced as a byproduct of manufacturing refrigerants. HFCs are roughly 11,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide, so investing in relatively cheap HFC projects in China gives you a lot of bang for your carbon credit buck. (The World Bank has played in major role in promoting these projects, with some controversy.)

Most carbon credit projects in China, therefore, are related to HFCs rather than things like windmills and solar panels -- at least so far. New HFC projects are increasingly hard to come by since most factories already have the proper equipment installed.

But what about Africa? Why so little investment? Well, the continent has few factories -- hence few carbon projects.

When Hillary Clinton signed on to John McCain's proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent federal gas tax this summer and Barack Obama didn't, the Democratic candidates suddenly had a real substantive difference to debate.

The trouble is, there's not much to argue about. Everyone who's looked at this knows that a gas-tax holiday is a silly idea. With gasoline supplies pretty much fixed in the short term, demand will increase and the price will go back up. But instead of the U.S. government capturing that revenue, the oil companies will pocket it. Factcheck.org tried and failed to find a single economist who thought gas prices would drop as a result of the holiday. PBS couldn't find a supporter, either.

Asked about this by ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday, Hillary sniffed, "I'm not going to put in my lot with economists." What's it going to be then, prayer circles?

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

Now, you might say: There's almost zero chance this proposal will go anywhere, so what's the harm? Well, it makes no sense to say you're for "energy independence" while vowing to cut gas taxes. If anything, the U.S. government should raise the federal gas tax to at least 50 cents a gallon, not cut it. Or better yet, tax carbon and bring coal emissions into the mix, too. But above all, don't mislead voters about the choices before them.

Fortune has an interesting interview with Google cofounder Larry Page. Here he is pontificating about alternative energy, one of his company's eclectic new research areas:

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

You can be a bit of a detective and ask, What are the industries where things haven't changed much in 50 years? We've been looking a little at geothermal power. And you start thinking about it, and you say, Well, a couple of miles under this spot or almost any other place in the world, it's pretty darn hot. How hard should it be to dig a really deep hole? We've been drilling for a long time, mostly for oil - and oil's expensive. If you want to move heat around, you need bigger holes. The technology just hasn't been developed for extracting heat. I imagine there's pretty good odds that's possible.

Solar thermal's another area we've been working on; the numbers there are just astounding. In Southern California or Nevada, on a day with an average amount of sun, you can generate 800 megawatts on one square mile. And 800 megawatts is actually a lot. A nuclear plant is about 2,000 megawatts.

The amount of land that's required to power the entire U.S. with electricity is something like 100 miles by 100 miles. So you say, "What do I need to do to generate that power?" You could buy solar cells. The problem is, at today's solar prices you'd need trillions of dollars to generate all the electricity in the U.S. Then you say, "Well, how much do mirrors cost?" And it turns out you can buy pieces of glass and a mirror and you can cover those areas for not that much money. Somehow the world is not doing a good job of making this stuff available. As a society, on the larger questions we have, we're not making reasonable progress.

And yet, Page is optimistic that this progress can accelerate:

Look at the things we worry about - poverty, global warming, people dying in accidents. And look at the things that drive people's basic level of happiness - safety and opportunity for their kids, plus basic things like health and shelter. I think our ability to achieve these things on a large scale for many people in the world is improving.

Getty Images

Tulsi Tanti, one India's most inspiring "green" entrepreneurs and now one of the world's richest people (worth $3 billion), is facing stiff challenges with his wind power company that could either lead to its massive failure, or its unbridled success. Tanti is hailed as one of India's most globally successful businessmen in the vein of Ratan Tata and Lakshmi Mittal -- but his company is one of the few that has given India the potential to be a worldwide leader in alternative energy.

But now Suzlon Energy, which Tanti founded and now serves as chairman and managing director for, confronts two main challenges, according to Friday's Wall Street Journal. First, the 144-foot-long windmill blades the company has sold to energy firms including California's Edison Mission Energy have begun to split in some locations, and Suzlon has had to recall 1,251 blades. That represents the majority of blades the company has sold in the United States, and a cost of at least $30 million to the company to repair the cracked blades and reinforce the rest.

The second major challenge for Suzlon is gaining access to the wind industry's most advanced technology. Suzlon is actually in a prime position to do so through its 33.6 percent ownership stake in the innovative German turbine manufacturer, REpower. The problem for Suzlon, however, is that under  German law, REpower can consider Suzlon a "competitor" since it does not own a majority of the company. It is therefore not obliged to transfer its blueprints to Suzlon; Suzlon would need to buy out the minority shareholders. And REpower is refusing to share the technology at present in order to protect the interests of those minority shareholders.

Nonetheless, it's unlikely that these setbacks spell major trouble for Suzlon. As of late last year, the firm had a $3.5 billion order backlog, and wind power demand in general has been growing significantly. With its green credentials and the fact that oil is continuing to hit record highs, wind power is set to remain popular. Moreover, Suzlon has withstood plenty of other challenges since its founding in 1995: the withdrawal of tax breaks in India, competition with major Western companies to acquire other foreign firms, and overseas expansion -- including cracking into the U.S. and Chinese energy markets. Suzlon's annual sales amount to $1.8 billion, and its profits are growing. The WSJ reports that it probably won't be able to make a tender offer for REpower until 2009. Even so, given Suzlon's history I'm expecting the deal to go through, and for Tanti to look back on these problems as minor glitches. And if you live in the United States, don't be surprised if part of your electricity payments soon end up in Suzlon's coffers.

JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

The European Union just took what it hopes will be a crucial step toward escaping its dependence on Russian natural gas.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner told the Financial Times that Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov (left) promised last week to supply the EU with 10 billion cubic meters of gas per year in addition to what it is already supplying to Russia and China. The EU has been pushing hard for a deal like this ever since the death of Turkmenistan's former leader, the lunatic isolationist Saparmurat Niyazov.

The only problem is, no one is exactly sure how they're going to get the gas to Europe:

There were three short-term options, Mrs Ferrero-Waldner said. One would be to close a 60km gap between Azeri and Turkmen offshore installations with a mini-pipeline. Another would be to build an onshore link to Kazakhstan, to connect with a route to Azerbaijan. The third would be to compress the gas into liquid form and take it by tanker across the sea.

The hope is that Turkmen gas fields can eventually supply the proposed Nabucco pipeline across Turkey. Unfortunately, the first leg of the pipeline won't be operational until at least 2013. (China, on the other hand, will have its own Turkmen pipeline up and running by next year.)

According to Eurasianet, the Russian response has been muted, with analysts pointing out that given Europe's 500 bcm yearly gas needs, 10 bcm is small potatoes:

For example, the Rosbalt news agency quoted Alexander Shtok, a Moscow economic analyst, as asserting that EU officials had sought a greater commitment from Berdymukhamedov. Thus, the EU mission to Ashgabat was "unsuccessful," Shtok contended. Other experts, citing Turkmenistan’s tangled involvement in the Russian-sponsored Prikaspiisky pipeline, say that Berdymukhamedov can be quick to agree on a deal, but is capable of stalling when it comes to implementation.

Ferrero-Waldner acknowledged that the commitment was not a "vast quantity" but described it as a "very important first step." Given that most of Turkmenistan's reserves have not been developed, and those that have been are under contract until 2028, a lot more big steps are going to be needed if Europe plans to break its Russian gas habit.

Though, if it doesn't work out, there's always Iran.

GERARD CERLES/AFP/Getty Images

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs has a great new blog, and he's wasted no time in taking on a controversial issue. Biofuels have taken a lot of hits lately, but Piebalgs says the relationship between them and food prices is overblown:

Biofuels, have become a scapegoat for recent commodity price increases that have other causes – poor harvests worldwide and growing food demand generated by increased standards of living in China and India. In Europe, we use less than 2 percent of our cereals production for biofuels, so they do not contribute significantly to higher food prices in the European context. Even if we reach our 10% biofuels target by 2020, the price impact will be small. Our modeling suggests that it will cause a 8 to 10% increase in rape seed prices and 3 to 6% increase in cereal prices. Increase in the price of the latest has very small influence on the cost of bread. It makes up around 4 per cent of the consumer price of a loaf.

Even if price food price distortions are minor, I'm still not convinced the biofuels are worth the trouble given that it's not entirely clear whether they really do anything to reduce greenhouse emissions once land clearance is taken into account. Still, Piebalgs' blog should be great opportunity to hear from an informed voice in the debate.

DANIL SEMYONOV/AFP/Getty Images

The focus of the seminar I'm attending here in Salzburg is figuring out what Russia will be like in 2020. It's no small task, since Russia's political and economic development in the past few decades has been notoriously unpredictable.

One thing we do know is that the future of Russia will largely be determined by oil and gas, at least in the near term. Oil and gas account for about 20 percent of Russian GDP and more than 60 percent of its exports. The rest of the economy depends heavily on energy. As one panelist put it today, oil is like the blood of the economy, so you can't think about it solely in percentage terms. You can't live without blood, no matter what its percentage of your body weight might be.

The recent high oil prices have a great deal to do with Russia's democratic backsliding, as Thomas Friedman argued in "The First Law of Petropolitics." Oil revenues allow the Russian state to satisfy its citizens without granting them greater political rights. So, if you want to understand where Russian politics are headed, you need to know where oil prices are going to go.

But here's the problem: Nobody has a clue what oil prices will look like in 2020. As one of the presenters pointed out, even people you would think would be the top experts on this issue are usually wrong. Take the case of former BP CEO Lord Browne, who told a crowd at the Peterson Institute back in 2005 that he expected "a price that stabilizes at around $30 a barrel." Whoops. Today, oil prices are just under $107 per barrel.

If oil-company CEOs can't predict the future accurately, what about the oil futures market? In theory, oil traders ought to know better than anyone where prices are headed, since their livelihoods depend on making sound decisions. In reality, though, oil futures prices are almost always just an extrapolation of today's prices into the future. If oil is $10 a barrel today, the futures market will guess that it will be $10 tomorrow.

The obvious implication here is that anyone trying to forecast Russia's future is in big trouble. Another implication is that Dmitry Medvedev is only going to be able to shape Russia's development on the margins. More on that soon.

Blake Hounshell is Web Editor of ForeignPolicy.com. He has been blogging this week from the Salzburg Global Seminar session on Russia: The 2020 Perspective.