This quote from Wendell Berry often occurs to me in these contexts:
"One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely.
This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on.
This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character.
We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for.
And we cannot restrain ourselves.
Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."
Someday, when the last red dwarfs are burning out and all the black holes have evaporated, the Malthusians will get their “see we told you so” moment. Thankfully that day isn’t today.
> This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on.
I think this is like many new technologies - overestimated in the short term, underestimated in the long term.
I'm reminded of voice recognition systems. we would be able to talk to our computers! well, that didn't happen, but we did get telephone voice response systems, then you could talk to your car, and now it is ubiquitous.
The idea is less that we can or cannot develop unlimited sources of energy, and more that we have no idea how to use that amount of energy in ways that aren’t destructive.
"One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely.
This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy: domestic oil fields, shale oil, gasified coal, nuclear power, solar energy, and so on.
This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity: it is moral ignorance and weakness of character.
We don't know how to use energy or what to use it for.
And we cannot restrain ourselves.
Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy."