And this final note. You know more often than not the debate over energy and the environment is framed as either/or. Oil and gas versus, say, wind and solar.

Well, the oil giant Chevron is…doing its part…to bring the two worlds together. As you know, it takes energy to pull crude oil out of the earth. One common way is to burn natural gas to generate steam to heat up the oil for extraction. Chevron has a new project that generates steam a different way: by using mirrors to reflect solar energy onto a boiler.

Yes. They’re using solar to get oil out of the ground. And manufacturing a hefty dose of irony in the process.