As energy becomes the obvious critical path in our world's economics, food production, and general survivability if you like, growth models like GDP and other growth fictions will necessarily fall away and we will have to address conservation of existing resources and alternative energy like hydrogen with alternative hydrogen carriers other than carbon. Like nitrogen for example. The time is late.
Truly alternative and renewable energetic chemistry requires an intelligent comprehension of energy balances that are sane and rational. Consuming millions of barrels of oil to mine millions of tons of lithium to manufacture batteries that then drain the existing energy feedstocks even more is not a sane or rational solution. Not to mention the knock on effects of electrification to charge and recharge these devices by way of a power grid infrastructure that requires re-engineering, will consume concomitant copper and critical minerals to manufacture magnets (for electric motors) - more energy in than what we will get out. Never mind the carbon hocus-pocus side show. We have an enormous problem that cooperation and rational policy is badly needed to bring the intellectual resources together to resolve. The world's historical habit of colonialism and projection of bully politics that empires traditionally attempt to enforce simply will not work, because they do not provide a solution - only a painful downward spiral towards a cold dark place. We need a solution and we together can create many. First through conservation, and then through innovation. This problem will prove to be a great inflection point in our development as a global community. Get it right and imagine how good this can be for all of us. Get this wrong and imagine how painful this will be for all of us. What I'm trying to say is, this is a global energy crises, if we can solve it, we can strive to be energy independent, what a gift for our children.
I agree with Alister that rapid decentralization and experimental development of a myriad of regionally supportable methods look to me to be the ultimate sustainable solution. This however requires a seismic shift in how we understand personal wealth creation, projection of influence and power, national political power projection and wasteful dedication of resources that do not solve this problem, the ideas of commerce and our quality of life. This effort will require a giant leap in compassion and trust (trust and truth telling seem to be at an all time low at the moment) which allows sharing resources rather than the private hoarding, legalistic games aimed at wealth generation such as pattenting ideas - they just bar access to innovation which has been the hallmark of economic wealth aggregation. The usual solutions invoked to acquire somebody else's resources won't work either - not a solution. The historical reactions to resource scarcity will only squander the time we have to soft land the world's population and reorient our thoughts around sustainable living in a very different future. Can we evolve, or will we revert to sticks and stones?
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