Mitigating climate risk: alternative energy sources

Although his data is a bit dated, Caltech chemist Nate Lewis provides a compelling, bottoms-up analysis of the potential of non-carbon energy sources as a way of mitigating climate change. The main takeaway is that we're not going to get much done developing non-carbon energy sources until we price in the environmental externalities of carbon-based energy sources. In short, we need a carbon tax, bad.

Hat tip: EF.