I feel like what we need to do is dump $50 to $100 billion per year into nuclear fusion reactor research, then get them online around the world as soon as possible.
If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.
Even if we already new how to do fusion we couldn't build fusion plants quickly enough to prevent catastrophic warming. Arguably we can't even build fission plants quickly enough for that. The window for fusion has closed, we should've invested forty years ago. Hoping for some breakthrough that allows us to build these fifty times faster than we currently believe we might be able to build them is a very risky maneuver.
There are companies and research groups in a number of countries currently experimenting with next generation fusion devices which have a new class of superconductor in them as compared to ITER (in essence, they run at a higher cryogenic temperature so need less exotic refrigeration to operate). None have as yet proved their work to be commercially viable (to my knowledge) but there is real work being done.
If the patents are to be believed, then Lockheed-Martin's Skunkworks has developed a portable fusion reactor the size of an intermodal shipping container. I'd like to see those scaled up significantly for usage around the world, for a variety of reasons... extraordinarily cheap power for one, but far more manageable nuclear waste storage for another, and more important, reason.