“Humans are absolutely terrible at making decisions,” Steven Levitt told the crowd of participants today at the Shell-sponsored Energy Summit 2012 in Houston, Texas.

For two days, the Summit brought together leading business and academic thinkers from the fields of renewable and traditional energy, plus food and water policy. Proceedings were held in the farm-to-table Grove restaurant on the Discovery Green, in the heart of downtown Houston, which is sometimes called the “Petro Metro” because of its leading role in the fossil fuel industries.

There was a lot of talk of legacy fuels over the two days, as well as newer alternatives. Levitt, best known for co-writing the blockbuster book Freakonomics with journalist Stephen Dubner, encouraged the industry leaders to