The human race may have never experienced a greater challenge than today’s energy-based global warming.

But solutions exist in the least anticipated places – and not in today’s corn-derived ethanol.

Maverick geneticist J. Craig Venter, who helped map the human genome in the 1990s, says he is mapping several ways to solve the problem. But he says corn ethanol is not the way to go.

Second- and third-generation bio-fuels are much more promising, he predicted during an address at the AlwaysOn Going Green conference in San Francisco. And he touts a fourth-generation fuel that uses micro algae to consumes carbon dioxide (an global warming greenhouse gas) to produce lipids, or bio-diesel. He hopes to see production begin in the next few years.

The earth’s population will grow to 9 billion in the next 40 years, with demands for food, fuels and water rising in sync. “Humanity has never been faced with this challenge before,” he said.

Creative science is needed. Ambitious, too. "Our goal," he says, "is to replace the petro-chemical industry as quickly as possible."

By Mark Boslet, Editor at Large.