Will we overcome unsustainability and economic collapse. Global warming can not be properly reversed if we do not employ robotic means to exponentiate solar energy collection and electrical storage.

There are many different ways to collect energy from the sun. Photovoltaic panels are a promising way to make use of all the sunny spaces above human settlement, however, in the desert, there is a way to gain twice the efficiency which consumes only about 1% of the water as needed (for cooling) in an equal amount of coal based generation. This water is used only for washing mirrors as excess heat is absorbed by the air. ***

The next step to true energy independence is being able to store the electrical energy generated by intermittant wind and solar. There are many possible ways of storing energy, such as pumped hydro, compressed air, flywheels, thermal, even by super conducting means. Only through large scale production is there a way to dramatically cut the costs of these storage schemes since physical size, weight and thermal expansion issues have mostly already been perfected.

The solution is not to make fossil fuels more expensive; the solution is to make alternative energy cheaper. - Bjørn Lomborg

Batteries have the potential to cut the costs of electrical storage by orders of magnitude because they have not been perfected yet. They will eventually be mass produced on utility levels far cheaper than currently imagined and last for thousands of cycles.

The LiFePO4 battery could be this electrical storage medium on this scale WHEN politics and proprietary issues can be resolved. Also known as the li-fe battery, or LFP, it is not prone to explosion and is already being made to lasts for thousands of cycles. Unlike it's similar predecessor, the li-ion, it will have no raw materials supply issues until well into the TerraWatt level.