Last year, it pledged to find at least 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Even more surprising was the dramatic announcement by oil giant BP in 1997 agreeing that climate change was indeed occurring. Even with other oil firms protesting that the evidence was too thin, BP pledged to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 10 percent from 1990 levels by 2010. At the same time, BP Amoco is pouring money into natural gas exploration and investing in renewable energy like solar power and hydrogen. Even America's largest coal-burning utility company is experimenting.
Application is at least a decade away.
In automobile manufacturing, there is already a race on for alternatives to fossil fuels. Several automakers like Ford, DaimlerChrysler, and Volkswagen have developed prototypes of cars run by hydrogen fuel cells rather than gasoline. The performance is very similar to that of today's cars, but the cost remains, for now, prohibitive. But if we have another war in the Middle East or gasoline lines, that will get their attention. Even with these efforts, and many more, climatologists point out that turning the atmosphere around is much harder than turning a supertanker.