OIL PRICES GUSH. Oil prices rose more than 40% in 2007, nearing $100 a barrel. Dialing out inflation to get “real dollars,” prices rose to the same stratospheric level of the 1970s Arab oil embargo. Hawaii maritime shipping costs soared because of it and virtually all Hawaii-based businesses were affected by that and by the rising cost of fuel for their delivery vehicles. Oil prices also led to airline and cruise ship fuel surcharges. Gasoline finally got so expensive that sales of “light trucks” (SUVs, vans and pickup trucks) plummeted as consumers showed new interest in cars that aren’t so thirsty. In Hawaii there was renewed interest in renewable energy, with several companies planning biofuel operations.

MORTGAGE CRISIS. Aggressive selling of “subprimes” — home loans at extra-high interest rates — to people who couldn’t afford them led to record mortgage defaults. Since mortgages are bundled and sold as investments, the defaults led the mortgage investment market to dry up, creating a short of cash for lending — a credit crisis whose effects went far beyond the original subprimes to affect companies and people not otherwise connected to the original risky business. The dollar lost about a tenth of its value against the euro in 2007. The CEOs of several major investment firms unfurled their golden parachutes and the Fed injected billions into the banking system to keep the economy moving. Hundreds of Hawaii residents with subprime mortgages faced foreclosure, but this was actually one of the lowest per capita rates of any state.

THE CHINA SYNDROME. Millions of toys made in China were recalled over lead paint. Earlier, several toothpastes made in China were recalled for containing an ingredient in antifreeze. And pet food made in China, containing a chemical used in plastics, sickened hundreds of cats and dogs.

CAMPUS SLAUGHTER. The worst mass murder in American history took place in April when 23-year-old Seung-Hui Cho shot students and professors at Virginia Tech before taking his own life, for a death toll of 32. In Hawaii, KGMB9 exposed lax security at UH. In December a teenager killed eight people and himself at a mall in Nebraska. There was also an infrastructure disaster in 2007 when the collapse of an Interstate bridge into the Mississippi River at Minneapolis killed 13 and hurt 100. An there was a mine disaster in Utah one year after one in West Virginia.

STEM CELLS. Scientists reprogrammed other cells to mimic stem cells, the kind you can use to grow any kind of tissue you need. Until now you needed embryonic tissue to do that. The breakthrough promises to advance disease treatment and prevention while disengaging from the abortion issue.

GLOBAL WARMING. After decades of political debate about whether there was such a thing as global warming, the United Nations finally declared flatly that it was a scientific fact, and the Nobel Peace Prize was shared by U.N. scientists and former vice president Al Gore, who had been trying to tell people this for years and finally made a documentary movie to lay out the case. The administration acted in December by requiring an increase in vehicle fuel economy for the first time in more than three decades.