Geoffrey Ballard, founder of Ballard Power, has an Ethical Markets discussion on how China, Mayalasia, and other developing countries are slowly beginning to enjoy the same standards of living as the West. He also examines the potential environmental loss that would occur if a large percentage of these populations became car owners.

The fossil fuel behemoth formerly known as British Petroleum has been ridiculed by some environmental critics for the new name it adopted several years ago, Beyond Petroleum, given the negligible size of its alternative-energy division. But detractors can’t laugh any longer: On Tuesday, BP announced that it would funnel a whopping $8 billion of R&D funds into clean-energy innovation—eight times the $1 billion it spent in this area over the past decade.