Race to Find Green Energy

Want to get rich? I mean stinking, filthy rich? The age-old secret was to strike oil, you know -- black gold, Texas tea.

But that dirty, gooey, planet-polluting, ozone-depleting stuff is just so 20th Century, so pre-global warming. What I'm talking about is tapping a gusher of a virtual green oil well.

These days, striking real oil seems to be as difficult as it is expensive, with almost 75% of land currently leased for oil exploration in the U.S. outside of Alaska going untapped. And there are only six companies who control the vast majority of those idle leases.

So if striking actual oil is difficult even for Big Oil, there is little chance that J. Paul Getty's (once the world's richest man, and founder of Getty Oil, which was later bought by Texaco) advice for success can be followed literally today: "Rise early, work hard and strike oil."

Ah, but that does not mean Getty's suggestion can't be followed figuratively. ...