I have a feeling the key to sustaining our 1st world lifestyles will be through figuring out how to do cold fusion power generation.

Green energy sounds nice but unless science comes up with some new ideas on how to make solar cells and batteries there just won't be enough so-called "rare earths" to go around. If everything that uses fossil fuels were replaced with current green technologies today we'd immediately have global shortages of gold; copper; platinum; nickel; aluminum; and a dozen lesser known materials essential for these high tech applications. You think scrap thefts are bad now? This would make metal so expensive that it'll be like mad max out there only with people looking to steal metal instead of old gasoline.

They found a enourmus deposit of rare earths down at the bottom of the sea, a few days ago. Japan could use wind energy because they have very long coasts with steady winds and even solar energy becomes cheaper day by day. It's a question of time until it becomes profitable. There are several methods to stock the green energy. Pumpspeicherkraftwerke (there is no translation in my dictionary) It means if there is too much wind, water will be pumped to a higher place, when the energy is needed it works like a hydroelectric plant. Another way is to produce hydrogen to use it as an energy storage.