This Dec. 10 account from the San Francisco Chronicle paints Steven Chu, President-elect Barack Obama's pick to lead the Energy Department, as an alternative-fuels visionary who will buck the oil cartel. But this year saw a protest campaign on campus at UC Berkeley against a program Chu championed to bring "biofuels" research to the university—under the auspices of oil giant BP.

Via the Global Justice Ecology Project, Dec. 9:

We, the undersigned representatives of indigenous peoples, local communities and non-governmental organizations monitoring the progress of negotiations in Poznan are outraged that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand opposed the inclusion of recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in a decision on REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) drafted today by government delegates at the UN Climate Conference.

The leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) nations met in Washington, DC on Nov. 15 for the group's first summit—an emergency session to discuss the world financial crisis. The G20 combines the Group of 8 (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the US) with growing industrial powers like China and India; together the G20 nations account for as much as 90% of the world's gross domestic product. The Latin American members are Argentina, Brazil and Mexico; this year Brazil holds the group's rotating leadership.

A green-energy ballot initiative in Missouri, Proposition C, was approved by voters, calling for the state to increase the use of renewable energy to 15% by 2021, mandating steady yearly increases. Prop C made Missouri the 27th state to require its utilities to buy a set amount of power generated by renewable sources.

Earlier this year, we asked if oil would reach $200 per barrel by year's end. Short of a sudden and dramatic crisis in the Middle East, that now seems impossible. The rising prices themselves put some long-overdue breaks on consumption—and now the economic crunch is continuing that trend even as prices fall again. From the Houston Chronicle, Oct. 30:

Our October issue featured the story "Behind the Econocataclysm: Globalization, Oil Shock and the Iraq War" by Vilosh Vinograd, citing George Soros, Joseph Stiglitz and Walden Bello to argue that the financial crisis was sparked by George Bush's imperialist aggression in the Middle East. Our October Exit Poll was: "Is it 1929 yet?" We received the following responses:

Even now that the economy is hitting the skids bigtime and the price of oil is back down below $100 ($66 per barrel on Oct. 30 according to CNNMoney)—prompting OPEC at its Vienna meeting to decide to cut production, after months of high output (WSJ, Oct. 25)—Exxon's profits continue to break records. John McCain seizes on this to take a cheap (if none too logical) shot at Obama...

The US has plundered global wealth by exploiting the dollar's dominance, and the world urgently needs other currencies to take its place, a front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily said Oct. 24. "The grim reality has led people, amidst the panic, to realize that the United States has used the US dollar's hegemony to plunder the world's wealth," said the commentator, Shi Jianxun, a professor at Shanghai's Tongji University.