Taking the position that energy is central to human well-being and the world needs affordable, plentiful, and clean energy for all of its inhabitants, Professor Lackner, in a highly technical lecture, posited that the atmospheric carbon dioxide level needs to be stabilized. He made a case that fossil fuel sources are not in danger of being depleted for at least several centuries. This flies in the face of the late geophysicist M. King Hubbert's prediction, first made in 1949, that the fossil fuel era would be of very short duration. Fossil fuel currently constitutes 85% of the energy we consume. He said that while many experts warn that fresh water is in short supply, desalination of the ocean waters can reverse that shortage providing that we can pay the energy bill. He said that the big three energy options are solar, nuclear, and fossil fuel, and can be supplemented by the cost-effective but less full-scale options provided by wind and hydroelectric. But without carbon capture and storage, fossil fuels will have to be phased out. Lackner explained the process of carbon capture as a means for climate change mitigation, or abating emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. He showed a slide of a synthetic "tree" that contains multiple chambers used to create a closed carbon cycle and are significantly more efficient at removing carbon dioxide than real trees are.

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