Had we been able to stand on the moon for the last quarter century, listening to the human discourse on Earth, and winnow out just the international institutional dialogue and media coverage concerning energy issues, we might reasonably expect on returning to our planet today to see significant changes in mankind's energy balance sheet. We would surely expect a significant change in energy technology investment patterns favoring low carbon technologies, clear signs of change in the shares of primary energy fuels, and in particular a downward inflection in the trend of global carbon dioxide emissions. After all, had we been absent for half as long – from 1973 to 1983 – we would have returned to see a markedly different world in terms of the oil security issues that dominated international discourse over that period.

This fantasy serves as a framework for examining investment trends in energy technologies. The threats posed by mankind to its own species have been documented and discussed for nearly half a century; some predictions have not come to pass – at least, not yet – and new threats have been added to the roster. Energy is fundamental to the human condition and, not surprisingly, is woven through most of the threats. As with any species, Homo sapiens devise myriad strategies to obtain and convert fuel into energy to assure our survival.