It's not just the practical problem of getting rich people in the west to lower their consumption, it's the deeply moral problem of denying the lifestyle we've

It's not just the practical problem of getting rich people in the west to lower their consumption, it's the deeply moral problem of denying the lifestyle we've enjoyed for the past ~century to the couple of billion people currently joining the middle class. So yes, technology is the only solution. Incremental improvements in efficiency should not be shunned, but they're not going to be 'solutions'. I'm not even sure we will need to go to very dramatic steps to get there. Solar competitive with coal at market-prices seems to be right around the corner, that'll be a massive water-shed moment. I have high hopes for algae fuel (perhaps naive), because this can plug directly in to the existing downstream oil infrastructure (and burning hydrocarbons is going to be part of life for the foreseeable future).