Bill Gates at TED - Innovating to Zero

If you have not already seen it, then Bill Gates on how the world can get to zero emissions is a TED worth viewing. While usually known for his work in humanities, the Gates foundation main concern is Climate Change, having now overtaken other factor as the greatest risk to people's wellbeing:  

"Energy and climate are more important to the poorest people in the world than anything else. The climate getting worst, means in many areas crops wont grow. Too much rain, not enough rain. Things will change in ways that their fragile environment simply cannot support"

Gates revisits the Human Induced Cliamte Change equation, identifying that energy is the only real factor we should be concentrating on. In summary:

CO2 = P * S * E * C

The amount of human induced carbon into the atmosphere can be considered as a product of Number of People * Number of Services per person * Amount of Energy needed per Service * Carbon per unit of Energy. Needless to say we can't do much about P, S or E without considerable human suffering, however the C is in our control. Transforming our energy generation is therefore key to the future stabiliy of our planet. 

It does ignore the emissions from agriculture, NZ largest single source of methane greenhouse gas, but this is effectively very small (<1%) of world wide emissions. Overall the approach does make sense, but relying on this 'new' source of nuclear energy that is >100 times more efficient than fossil fuel appears to be a long shot. It should not discount all the efforts people and economies are taking now, although perhaps marginal by comparison. Here is hoping at least one of the technologies he mentions does take off...