Jim,
I don't see the hard-stop after 10 years, or any other time frame, as you've suggested. All the pixels don't splash at once. Instead, I submit, if deficient conditions persist, or they improve only sub-optimally and fall short of meeting the criteria that bring us to where you suggest we must be by a certain point in time**, then I think society will concomitantly adjust to the conditions of a continual downward curve on an instantaneous basis, hence lead-lagging along a moving window of equilibrium, as opposed to a negative-going step function that results in a sudden, climactic collapse.
** Most notions surrounding established energy consumption trajectories are themselves flawed and require further discussion. As a species we tend today to use energy uneconomically. In my own area of expertise I see evidence that there is still room for radical reductions in consumption, not to mention new ways in which renewable energy could be tapped but still are not. For example, buildings that are being erected today are still being designed to support two or three heat furnaces (LAN rooms) on every floor, following an arcane dependence on copper cabling, when there is no longer a need to follow that paradigm. Conversely, I completely agree that new applications will require offsetting amounts of energy in areas where no need previously existed, which will tend to neutralize future efficiency gains, but only so far as the moving window I alluded to above will permit, IMO.
FAC
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