Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com

At the recent Blue Planet Foundation global environmental summit in Hawaii, there was wide agreement that the world’s energy and environmental crises won’t be solved by men. It will be solved by women and children.

And so it is that EnergyTechStocks.com predicts that three of the biggest, most unexpected winners that will arise out of the world’s energy and environmental crises will be MySpace, a unit of News Corp., YouTube, which is owned by Google Inc., and privately-owned Facebook, for whom Microsoft Corp.. is the exclusive provider of advertising.

With gasoline prices eating holes in the wallets of the world’s most vulnerable consumers – young people and single women – EnergyTechStocks.com anticipates that each of these social networking sites will be utilized in what will coalesce over time into a gigantic national (or even international) Internet-based carpooling network. Instead of reaching for the car keys, women and young people will reach first for their cell phones, blackberries or laptops to check whether someone is going where and when they need to go.

Probably the best thing Washington could do to insure the success of such a program would be to keep the hell out of it. This isn’t something that can or should be coordinated. Out of necessity young people will seek out rides in ever larger numbers. Over time carpooling will become an extension of the social networking experience offered by these web sites.

Of course there will be safety and other issues. But as more people use these sites and do so more frequently, the potential for more advertising revenue will compel the web sites’ owners to systemize security for carpoolers, perhaps by issuing a special card or ID number.

This carpooling network could accelerate the energy efficiency revolution already underway, as advertisers pitch twentysomethings with coupon offers on, say, energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs.

Save for telecommuting, carpooling is the only way to significantly reduce gasoline consumption right now without raising gas taxes, so investors might want to give these social networking sites a closer look.