Hi, Mq - There can be no clear "winner" in this debate, because we're discussing an unpredictable future.
I fully appreciate your belief in our ingenuity, and very much share your appreciation for technology... so please don't take the opposition personally.
However, the dynamics are not as simple as "technology vs. depletion". Reversion to a historical mean is a basic concept, but it embraces a number of complex systems, not least of which is economics. The predicted effect is entropic, not only as it applies to energy, but as it applies to the systems that have grown around energy's abundance. These systems are what we have known and understood in our lifetime, but they are historically atypical: they became "reality" in an era of unprecedented abundance and expansion, based on the growth of industrialism, but more fundamentally, on unlimited access to cheap energy without regard to extraneous (read: environmental) cost.
Now, at this late stage in an atypical era, we have elected to pay - at least partially - the environmental cost, which will accelerate the economic drag as simultaneously, the interlocking array of complex systems devolves.
Concurrent phenomena such as population growth, rising expectations for standards of living, and economic nationalism (i.e., we've got it, we need it, and we're keeping it) will also contribute. Events will play out as a "rising tide" phenomenon, at least until globally, people begin to understand that humanity is "behind the curve" on energy. Then, things get really unpredictable.
I refer you to a recent post, and thank you for the spirited debate:
Message 26097409
Regards,
Jim |
