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Advocates claim that ethanol mandates and subsidies protect our planet, enhance U.S. security, and ease our pain at the pump. In fact, ethanol policy hurts all Americans except for the tiny slice of the population that grows corn or distills it into ethanol.

Former Vice President Al Gore recently took his climate-change show on the road for the benefit of liberal bloggers, Sunday morning TV aficionados and other innocent bystanders. This week he laid out his demand for a miraculous transformation in U.S. energy use over a mere 10 years. As for drilling for more oil? "Absurd," the Nobel Laureate scoffed. "When you're in a hole, stop digging."

The national debate over opening more offshore areas to oil and gas exploration has begged the question: Just what are the companies doing with the tens of millions of acres they're already leasing from the federal government?

With energy prices on a steady climb, consumers have been looking for ways to cut back. They are driving less, turning down the pool heaters and using fans instead of air-conditioners.

Oil prices could hit $300 a barrel if the United States does not take drastic action to reduce its heavy dependence on foreign oil, but neither of the top presidential candidates is addressing the crisis,

Environmental groups have railed for years against President Bush and the Republican Congress, calling on them to resist drilling the nation’s public lands. 

Bush administration officials agreed that greenhouse gases could endanger the public and should be regulated under clean-air laws, but later reversed course amid opposition from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the oil industry, a congressional report said.

As the price of oil and natural gas soars, many customers are looking to coal as an alternative fuel. That means a boon for suppliers -- and a potential bane for the environment.

The next blow from high energy prices could come in the dead of winter.

Former Vice President Al Gore harnessed his star power Thursday to push global warming to the forefront of election politics, challenging the nation to embark on an Apollo-style project to convert all electricity production to wind, solar and other renewable energy within 10 years.

Now that an executive-branch ban on offshore oil exploration has been lifted, the time has come for Democrats in Washington to lift their own ban on increased domestic supply. Americans are demanding that Congress do something about record-high gas prices. They recognize that prices will not go down unless supplies go up. And they also know that the only thing now standing in the way of more domestic supply is the Democratic refusal to allow it.

The nation's frantic search for crude-oil sources is leading to one of the oldest, richest and most-elusive prizes in the petroleum industry: oil shale.

The price of European emission permits is rising so rapidly that German companies are threatening to leave the country. Thousands of jobs could be lost. And the environment may, in the end, be no better off.

In the novel 1984, George Orwell used the word “doublethink” to describe the process of believing two contradictory ideas simultaneously. The concept invites an appropriate but superficial comparison to congressional Democrats’ current approach to gasoline prices.

After trading at a record high of $147 a barrel Friday, the price of oil saw its largest one-day drop since the 2003 beginning of the Iraq war on Tuesday, falling $6.44 a barrel. Wednesday, it fell another $3.71, to $135.03, and at one point was trading as low as $132.

The global warming craze officially landed in Canberra yesterday, as the Labor government released a sketch of what it calls "one of the highest priorities of the Australian government": its carbon trading scheme. That should signal the beginning of an important debate about the costs of this grand plan. But can the opposition Liberal Party muster a coherent argument?

The European Union's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions doesn't sufficiently take business needs into account, said Germany's finance ministry.

The German Economy Ministry has attacked EU proposals to tackle climate change as "pointless" if other major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions are not also committed to significant reductions.

Speaking a week ahead of a crucial World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting on 21 July, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson urged the 27 EU countries, including France, to "show unity" towards achieving a breakthrough or risk the collapse of other international endeavours such as talks on climate change.

Al Gore hopes to put global warming back at the top of Washington’s agenda Thursday, but some Democrats in Congress are questioning his timing when they are getting pummeled by Republicans over record gas prices.