It began with a book. Not a famous book or a best seller but a science textbook, on the shelf of a community library in Malawi—one of 300,000 volumes donated to locations across Africa through the American Institutes for Research. Using Energy, by Professor Mary Atwater of the University of Georgia, had a picture on its cover that captured a 14-year-old William Kamkwanba's imagination, inspiring him to feats of invention. It was the image of a windmill.

In 2002 Kamkwamba had gone to the library in a stubborn attempt to continue his education. A drought had cut his family's food supply so he couldn't afford the fees necessary to enroll in secondary school. He knew little English and couldn't read most of Using Energy. But being the kind of guy who takes apart broken radios and fixes them, he was able to learn a great deal from the illustrations. He was sure he could build his own windmill using scrap from junkyards—an old bicycle frame, PVC pipes for blades. And he did.

To the amazement of fellow residents in the little town of Wimbe, when Kamkwamba hooked his windmill to a dynamo of the sort used to run a bicycle light off a rider's pedaling, his invention generated electricity.

Soon, Kamkwamba built another windmill to pump water from underground. A newspaper noticed. Then a blogger (although Wimbe did not have Internet access, and Kamkwamba had yet to learn the meaning of the world "Google"). Kamkwanba was invited to a TED conference and then himself became the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, written with journalist Bryan Mealer.

We are getting closer to the point where we may have to employ emergency engineering solutions to cool the planet, according to panelists at a geoengineering session during last week's Aspen Environment Forum.

The economic climate is right for redefining the automobile industry, Elizabeth Lowery, vice president for environment, energy, and safety policy at General Motors said last week at the Aspen Environment Forum.

Electric cars are the short-term solution to wean the world off of gas and oil and in return reduce the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that are driving climate change, according to a panel at the Forum on the future of transportation.

Just six days into the job, Jane Lubchenco, the new head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tells National Geographic "there is a great urgency in addressing [ocean] acidification by reducing CO2 emissions."

"The decisions that individuals make every day add up to affect our global climate," Lubchenco added. "The changes we are seeing now are influenced by our energy choices and uses over the last couple hundred years."

Oceans serve as a carbon sink, absorbing about a third of human-generated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The additional CO2 changes the chemical composition and lowers the pH of the seas. Acidic waters can prevent some marine life from producing calcium carbonate needed for shells and exoskeletons.

Lubchenco, a marine biologist and former Oregon State University professor, was at the Aspen Environment Forum in Colorado yesterday to talk about climate change politics and science.

On a Rocky Mountain day that saw cloudy skies and several inches of powder, solar energy experts gathered at the Aspen Environment Forum encouraged conference participants to turn sunlight, normally abundant in Colorado, into profit. 

Solar power is expected to be a growth market, in both developed and developing countries.

While captured sunlight will never account for the bulk of energy on a global or regional scale, it could provide up to 25 percent of U.S. energy needs and play an important role in delivering energy to poorer countries, said Neville Williams, founder of several solar companies and the author of Chasing the Sun.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2007, solar energy accounted for less than one percent of total American energy use.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson outlines her priorities and tells National Geographic that the EPA is back, ready to protect human health and the environment, despite the bumpy road ahead.

Jackson told a crowd of more than two hundred Aspen Environment Forum participants last night that EPA's top strategy for tackling climate change is to work with Congress on legislation, instead of focusing on amendments to the Clean Air Act that would allow regulation of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases.

The 2009 Aspen Environment Forum—focused on sustainable energy—kicks off today in Colorado.

Wal-Mart executives, green building experts, climate scientists, Economist and Washington Post reporters, and government officials from Mozambique, Panama, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, among many others, will mingle among the mountains as they discuss climate change, energy extraction and use, innovation and technology, efficiency, and conservation.

Photographer Tyrone Turner photographed the March 2009 coverage on energy efficiency and produced a striking set of images using a thermal camera. I had a chance to ask him about the challenges of the assignment.

“There is no feast which does not come to an end,” a Chinese proverb warns, and this month’s story on Canadian oil sands is a cautionary tale about the consequences of large appetites. With the decline of conventional oil reserves and the rising price of oil extraction, sources like oil sands—layers of tarlike bitumen mixed with clay, sand, and water—are increasingly attractive as a way to satisfy the world’s craving for hydrocarbons. The catch: Extracting them is messy and costly to the environment.