With limited recharging options available, “it was really frustrating,” he said. “Having access to a working port or finding an open plug during layovers at the airport was just too unpredictable.”

This has instilled renewed doubts about the health of the U.S. economy, and pulled down oil prices to a seven-week low of around $71 per barrel. The only saving grace came in the form of gasoline supplies, which defied market expectations and fell from the week-ago period.

Possibly, but the regulator seems rather more prescient than its detractors, given the news that Gazprom, and its joint venture partners, are mothballing the enormous Shtokman gas field under the Barents Sea.

But Dr. Pachauri and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are now under intense scrutiny, facing accusations of scientific sloppiness and potential financial conflicts of interest from climate skeptics, right-leaning politicians and even some mainstream scientists. Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, called for Dr. Pachauri’s resignation last week.

Despite its huge crude reserves, the South American OPEC member relies on hydro-electricity for 70 percent of its power needs, and a drought has hit supply since late 2009.

The possibility that Mexico’s oil and gas exports to the U.S. could go to zero within seven years looked very real.

A big but so far unspecified chunk of the cash will go on programmes to prevent loss of tropical forests, which is a major source of greenhouse gases "

As The New York Times reported recently, "China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain, and the United States last year to become the world's largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year. China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world's largest manufacturer of solar panels. ... These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines, and other gear manufactured in China." "

Also known as global warming, climate change has drawn widespread concern in recent years as temperatures around the world rise, threatening to harm crops, spread disease, increase sea levels, change storm and drought patterns and cause polar melting. "

Back in October, I participated in the 2nd International Biophysical Economics Conference at SUNY-ESF in Syracuse, New York. Charlie Hall had written to me, inviting me to come and give a talk. Specifically, he wanted me to go back to my post from January 2008 called Peak Oil and the Financial Markets: A Forecast for 2008 and explain why my forecasts had turned out pretty close to correct, while many others widely missed the mark. The title he suggested for the talk was Delusions of Finance. "