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This! In a world where oil discovery, extraction and distribution was ever increasing, betting on a bigger energy pie in the future made sense. All of our macro-economic theories were developed under the naive assumption of an increasing fossil-fueled bonanza.

But in a world of no new oil fields and increasing costs for extraction, we no longer have the ever-growing pie to fund our future financial obligations. Credit looks risky and economic decline seems inevitable based on the energy availability alone.

That's not even mentioning the externalities of fossil fuel consumption: climate impacts, ocean acidification, mass extinction, etc. make these economic issues even harder. Or is it the other way around? Either way, "this can't go on" and fossil fuels are a central part of the equation.




Wind and solar are cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels and are going to be a lot cheaper soon. They're going to fuel a boom we haven't seen since the energy crisis of the seventies.


Unfortunately physics and mechanics of these sources are not unlimited either.

Current renewables would require huge expanding battery capacity as well as mega production and construction we likely won't have in a few decades yet. (And we're already about 30 years too late handling the global warming.)

The problem is caused by energy density per manufactured unit panel/turbine, and additionally basic physics of the energy source.


We have huge expanding battery capacity and construction. That is literally a thing right now. And confidently saying we’re too late on global warming is an absolutely absurd claim.


I don't like it when people say we're "too late" on global warming either. But the narrative behind that is not physically absurd - as atmospheric CO2 density increases, the temperature rises, which makes in turn causes increased CO2 (increased fires), and this causes a runaway effect resulting in something like Venus.

It's not too late. And even if things become really dire, even apocalyptic, we may as well face it open-eyed and do our best to survive (in earthbound arks) and recover (applying all those science fictional terraforming ideas...to Terra). It seems highly unlikely that we'll survive (Fermi paradox and all) but that shouldn't stop us from giving it the old college try!


No, you're reading too much into "too late" part. We're unable to prevent reaching 3.5 C rise in 25 years and are clearly on track to exceeding it even more. This is the "too late" part.

We're not too late to mitigate the damage from it. And it will be a lot of damage requiring serious ingenuity to thrive under. Perhaps even survive.

Making the problem worse obviously makes it harder.


We are too late to preserve our culture but we aren't too late to keep on living.


Yes! Which is good news for anyone that relishes a good challenge.


There is every likelihood that we could in principle just keep drilling new oil. Our ability to extract oil at a cost effective rate scales almost exactly with the depletion of easy reserves. The reason we need to switch out is the devastating environmental impact, and only the devastating environmental impact.


It's not the drilling, but leaks of oil, gas, fires and obviously actually burning this fuel without full recapture. (Not offset, that is insufficient and sleigh of hand.)


The externality of fossil fuel consumption by far is the most problematic part of our economy. We have more energy than we ever meet from the sun, nearly all of which is uselessly radiated out into space, never mind what we don't use when sunlights hit our Earth.




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