As China's huge population graduates from bicycles, what is going to happen to oil prices? China -- still lacking in domestic oil infrastructure -- is going to compete against the United States to buy oil on the international market. The new destination of the oil tankers leaving the gulf could be China, not the U.S.

Americans usually move from a bicycle to a car around the age of 16 when they get a driver's license and money to buy their first car. And as China's middle class grows, so will the desire to move beyond bicycles. Whether it's a scooter, motorcycle or a car -- it is going to use gasoline.

Or will it?

On April 26, the long anticipated Senate climate bill is slated for its debut. Climate change talking points aside, how powerful a piece of legislation will this bill turn out to be for investors, and what could be its effects on manufacturing, retail and energy stocks?

For the sake of discussion, let's just assume that the bill will pass and become law. The first thing to understand is that it's not much more than an act of taxation. That new tax will be levied against businesses large and small via carbon offsets. They'll be showing up on balance sheets everywhere. Granted, we all know that businesses hand their tax bills down line to the consumers, but for large corporations and conglomerates, it's certain that the documentation and accounting will be more than a little distracting. Of course some business giants will be able to simply buy their way out from under the mess.

Is a recent legislative development in Colorado indicative of an energy trend? Certain energy investors and environmentalists hope so. Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter Monday signed into law a measure that will upgrade a coal-fired plant, Front Range, to enable it to run on natural gas. The Denverpost.com reported on the coal to natural gas conversion Tuesday.

A diverse coalition of gas companies, environmentalists, Democrats, and Republicans, found enough common ground to marshal the bill -- which was strongly opposed by the Colorado Mining Association -- through the legislature.

With the failed global warming submit; leaked emails, faked numbers, suppressed data and major snow storms hitting both Europe and America global warning aka "climategate" seems to have taken a major hit recently. Some are even going as far as predicting the demise of global warming.

This could be a big turning point for global warming. Having been caught in a lie; they have lost massive amount of creditability and now face an uphill battle to convince a skeptical public. Certainly, global warming may regain public credibility, but it will face a lot of scrutiny as it tries.

James Altucher is a financial journalist for The Wall Street Journal and founder of Stockpickr.com. His articles cover every angle of the market; he also stars in feature videos with other financial luminaries. He is the author of Trade Like a Hedge Fund, Trade Like Warren Buffett, SuperCa$h, and The Forever Portfolio.

He has taken a controversial path lately with numerous articles in the New York Post and Huffington Post. Some articles include: "Global Warming Is a Myth," "Should Insider Trading Be Made Legal?" "School of Hard Cash," "The Internet Is Dead (as an Investment)," and "5 Myths the Recession Taught Us."

Rumors of a new addition to the James Altucher library have entered the blogosphere, so I met with James to discuss a possible new book and the response from his recent aggressive views on finance and the stock market.

FT columnist Martin Wolf argues, quite persuasively, that Copenhagen follow-through will be essential to end climate change. And by follow-through Wolf means incentives -- big subsidies -- for green technology and new technology.

First, Wolf effectively refutes any confidence climate change doubters may have: it's not enough to question the science, because the risks of you being wrong far outweigh the risks if climate change is not occurring. That's because, if the doubters are wrong, there is a climate catastrophe up ahead: a destructive and irreversible climate shift. Conversely, if fossil fuel-based climate change is not occurring, the consequence from cleaner technologies will be the universal use of green energy and renewable energy resources.

Google, Inc. (GOOG) is one of the tech leaders when it comes to operating one of the largest technology companies on the planet while at the same time being one of the greenest companies, ecologically speaking.

So, it comes as no surprise that the company and its home state, California, are teaming up to try and raise awareness of climate change using Google Earth as the teaching medium.

TheStreet.com's Jim Cramer says the biggest companies can lobby their way to huge profits.

Anyone serious about climate change knows that coal is the worst enemy of the environment. We can have all of the electric cars we want, if they are hooked into a coal-based utility system then the gains are irrelevant. We can also be sure that while all sorts of companies, like the General Electrics (GE) (Cramer's Take) and Cokes (KO) (Cramer's Take) and Nikes (NKE) (Cramer's Take) and Nestles, support climate control, they are not equal to one Southern Company (SO) (Cramer's Take), which is an important coal-burning company and a huge lobbyist for the coal industry.

Our nation has a two-pronged climate philosophy: pushes on conservation and on renewables. Neither is enough to get us through the next 10 years; we can't produce enough renewable energy at a cheap price and we can't caulk our way out of the jam.

Nuclear power is coming back into style, and perhaps just in time for the climate, and for the United States.

Environmental groups, previously opposed to nuclear power, are starting to support the technology, as it represents the lesser of two evils compared to coal-fired electric power generation plants, The Washington Post reported Wednesday. And the choice is obvious enough: faced with either processing nuclear waste or seeing the atmosphere heat up to irreversible levels, via coal-producing climate change, nuclear technology wins.

Climate change isn't going to be free. A report by Point Carbon, an independent consulting company that tracks global carbon and energy markets, estimates that U.S. climate legislation could push the price at the pump 13 cents a gallon higher. The increase would result from the cost to oil companies for carbon permits, which they can pass along to consumers.

This is a much rosier view than that of the oil industry, however, which believes a U.S. cap-and-trade system would thrash demand for gasoline and lead to the shuttering of many refineries.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is fighting back. The organization has filed a civil lawsuit against the Yes Men, an activist group that announced that the chamber had changed its position on climate change.

The Yes Men told the National Press Club on October 19, 2009 that the Chamber of Commerce would give up lobbying against the Senate's 800-page climate change bill. Reuters, CNBC and Fox Business Network all reported on the story, with the anchors correcting themselves midstream, when they learned that it was false.

Investors hoping to ride the climate change bandwagon have had a roller coaster ride over the past two years. Greentech stocks soared with the oil spike in 2007 and 2008, then crashed with stock market and commodity price declines in 2009. Since then, some of the most obvious stock plays have strongly rebounded. Many solar stocks have posted high double-digit gains since rebounding off year-to-date lows in March 2009.

The leading solar panel manufacturer, FirstSolar (NASDAQ: FSLR) has appreciated by 45% from lows of near $100 to a closing price of $154 on October 14. "I wouldn't be stepping into buying these stocks right now," says Pacific Crest senior analyst Mark Bachman, who covers solar stocks. Still, he rates FirstSolar as a market perform and considers it the best solar stock at present on his coverage list.

The clean technology wave just got a little bigger. This tends to be a side-effect of interest from billionaire investor George Soros. And, as usual, it's more than just money; it's more than just a return. Soros, yet again, is trying to save the world. Interestingly, the bold move was announced at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate – an international association consisting of 430 newspapers from 150 countries (and thus with clear ties to the past, rather than future).

The investor and founder of Soros Fund Management LLC is planning to put $1 billion into clean-tech opportunities using what he calls "rather stringent criteria," which involves being "profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem [i.e., of clean technology adoption and proliferation]." Soros didn't provide any other details on the nature or scope of his investments.

Apple just bailed on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, citing the business organization's view on climate change. The Chamber of Commerce doesn't accept the notion that people are the force behind global warming and has called for public hearings to question the evidence that many accept. But, this has led several companies to leave the group, with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) only the latest.

The technology company stated through Catherine Novelli, a vice president of government affairs, that it would "prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis." Apple resigned its membership "effective immediately."

Rajendra Pachauri, U.N. climate scientist, has good news and bad news. I'll give you the latter first: eat less meat. Doing so will help slow global warming. The good news, also related to climate change, is that Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the United Nations, investing in green technologies now is a smart move. So, by following Pachauri's advice, you cut down on your meat but reward yourself with a decent investment return.

If you take his advice as a whole (pretending you don't know you can do one part without the other), it's like getting paid to eat your veggies. Everyone who's been five years old at some point knows that being given green to eat green is ample motivation. The fun part, here, is that you're financing it by investing in green. It all matches!