Tobacco, a crop under siege as the number of smoking bans in the United States continues to increase, may be turning a new leaf as a possible source of home insulation and biofuel.

At Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, researchers at its Biotechnology Foundation Laboratories have figured out how to tweak the genes in tobacco plants to increase their oil production, which could help spur their use as biofuel.

"Tobacco is very attractive as a biofuel because the idea is to use plants that aren't used in food production," said study co-author Vyacheslav Andrianov, assistant professor of cancer biology at Jefferson Medical College. He added:...

Published: September 18, 2009

“Fuel,” Josh Tickell’s unabashedly intimate, 11-years-in-the-making attack on America’s addiction to oil, is not so much a green documentary as a red, white and blue alarm. But if you can resist the urge to run for the exit, you may leave the theater feeling a lot more hopeful than when you went in.

A sustainable-energy evangelist whose church is a van that runs on grease, Mr. Tickell contends that the oil industry poisons our environment, corrupts our government and cooks our planet. Galvanized by a childhood spent among the oil refineries and pollution problems of Louisiana, Mr....

It could take ten years or more to become apparent, but I’ll call it now: the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine.

A caveat: I am not an automotive industry expert. Which is why I’m right. I’m not mired in the details, the past failures, the what ifs or the buts. All I see are the big, obvious things. When it comes to sea change in human behavior, though, obvious matters.

So, since no prediction is worth its salt without an accompanying list, the following are five overlapping reasons why our children will all be driving electric cars.

(By the way, these all assume that business as usual, that is, cars running on gasoline derived from (imported, finite, polluting) oil, is unsustainable. If you disagree, you’re at the wrong website.)...

The battle between US rescue plans and the recession is escalating, leaving oil prices directionless. Last week, the price of West Texas Intermediate crude rose more than $4 in the wake of the announcement by the US government of the plan to rescue Citigroup, the weaker US dollar, high expectations of the US government bailing out General Motors, and China's interest rate cut of 1.08 percentage points to 5.58% to boost economic growth.

However, any gain in the oil price was limited by worrying economic data, which included the US consumer spending shrinking in the third quarter by the steepest rate seen in 28 years; demand for durable goods decreasing twice as much as forecast; and China forecasting that GDP growth for the fourth quarter would slow to 8% from 9% in the third quarter due to declining exports and increasing unemployment....