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Entrepreneurs sometimes refer to the period between a project’s origins and its commercial deployment as “the valley of death.” The meaning of the term may be self-evident: it is the bog where most ideas stall and expire. Kleiner’s partners will tell you that ventures usually die because they fail to overcome one of four risk factors. To begin with, there is technology risk. As Ted Schlein, a Kleiner partner, put it one morning: “Can it be built? How hard is it to build it? And if you can build it, can other people build it just as well?” Next, Schlein said, is what he and his partners call “people risk.” How good is the team pitching the idea, and can its members execute their idea well? The third risk involves selling a product in the market, which most Kleiner partners believe is the hardest to gauge before making an investment. In Schlein’s words: “O.K., let’s say we can build it and get great people. Will anyone buy it?”

The final risk is financial.

leaves corn ethanol, with its massive federal subsidy, as pretty much the only game in town. So much corn is now going to biofuel that the food and energy markets are effectively linked, an unprecedented coupling that not only disrupts global food security but also undermines corn ethanol's usefulness as an oil replacement.

The ripple effect of energy alternatives isn't confined to the economic sphere. As eager farmers have expanded their corn crops (U.S. farmers planted more acres in 2007 than anytime since World War II), they've tilled land not suited for intensive agriculture, exacerbating erosion and other environmental problems. Corn is also the most chemically intensive commercial grain crop; runoff attributable to the ethanol boom is causing oceanic dead zones and pesticide-laden groundwater.

selling China more efficient technologies—cars, to be sure, but also better designs for houses, buildings, and industrial processes—could have a huge impact on global energy use and emissions.

As a bonus, such exports would likely be highly profitable. Japan, whose economy is nine times as energy efficient as China's, sees enormous economic and diplomatic opportunities selling its expertise to the Chinese, and America could tap into those opportunities as well—provided technologies with export potential get the kind of R&D support they need.

High prices mean that money is still flowing into rogue states. High oil prices also imply tight oil markets, prone to massive price swings that are painful for consumers and make it virtually impossible for companies and governments to forecast their future energy costs—and so correctly gauge how much to invest in next-generation energy technologies. And no matter how clean and carbon free the United States becomes, if China and India are still burning massive volumes of oil we haven't done much to improve long-term security of any kind.

The only way to achieve real energy security is to reengineer not just our energy economy but that of the entire world. Oil prices won't fall, evil regimes won't be bankrupt, and sustainability won't be possible—until global oil demand is slowed. And outside of an economic meltdown, the only way it can be is if the tools we deploy to improve our own security can be somehow exported to other countries, and especially developing countries.

"The only left turn you make is to come home."

According to the company, this simple technique saves an eye-popping amount of gasoline. "In the last year alone," a UPS release stated, "this system has shaved nearly 30 million miles off UPS's delivery routes, saved 3 million gallons of gas, and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons of CO2 - the equivalent of removing 5,300 passenger cars off the road for an entire year."