I agree on renewables and they are certainly part of the solution, but we can meet our energy without fossil fuels if we really leaned into nuclear the way the French did.

It's simply a matter of political will.

Musk looked at the regulatory tape around nuclear and said "I guess it has to be solar then" and I think that was a mistake. If we'd applied his economics of scale, and first principles thinking to nuclear we'd be far, far more along than we are right now and we'd probably have more medical isotopes to boot.

The french did this and ended up with nuclear costing more than current renewable. That said, it has served them well for the last decades and will probably still serve well for a decade or two.

We can relatively easily solve the problem of electricity production using nuclear, renewables and therefore make carbon-free electricity. But electricity is only 30% of our energy consumption.

Cars, Heating, and cooking can be replaced with electricity just fine even if their not currently part of that 30%.

Also, solar power overwhelmingly our largest energy source. It’s generally ignored in these calculations but farms for example are very dependent on sunlight.

Heating and cooling, OK. Cars require batteries, and there's not enough lithium to support as many electric cars as there exist combustion engine cars now. A breaktrhough will be needed, either in battery tech or shared transportation (either public transport, car-sharing, or generalized telecommuting).

There is plenty of lithium for EV’s. Existing mines are enough for ~1 billion cars, however raw lithium is currently well under 1% of the cost of a new Tesla so vastly more expensive mining options don’t really effect the economics much. The minimal amount of recycling would change dramatically as lithium prices increase.

PS: “battery grade” lithium is more expensive, but what changes isn’t the amount of lithium but removal of minor impurities.

> We had a world 100% on renewable, back in the 18th century

There's nothing renewable about using wood if you're not replanting the forest.

With 600 million people it was likely filling in naturally as people shuffle about.

Maybe in other places, but certainly not in 18th century Europe.

>back in the 18th century, but we were 600 millions and lived 35 years.

I'm not sure if this changes your point but many people lived to their 70s and 80s in the 18th century as they have for recorded history.

What do you mean with many people? A large part of aristocracy/bourgeoisie or most mundane people? What are good sources on that topic?

It's about all the mundane people who didn't die as babies. In earlier centuries, the life expectancy at birth (which is the metric that's about 35 years for that period) is dominated by the relatively high childhood mortality, all the many babies dying within the first days or weeks, and is very different from the expected lifespan of adults.

For example, here's a dataset on USA historical life expectancy https://www.infoplease.com/us/health-statistics/life-expecta... - if we look at the 1850 data, then the average life expectancy at birth is 38 years but that does not mean that people live until 38, as a the life expectancy for a random 20 year old man is 40 more years, so people (who didn't die in early childhood) lived (on average) to the age of 60, not 38.

There's data from Roman Empire where life expectancy was 25 years at birth, but life expectancy is average 53 years upon reaching age 25 - so the intuitive metric "how long do adults live" is twice as large as the technical life expectancy at birth.

Here's an archived resource that goes into more detail https://web.archive.org/web/20070713083310/http://www.plimot...

Coal use was common throughout all of recorded history. In Europe it picked up significantly in the 13th century.

As to abandoning energy sources, total amount of wood burned is actually down significantly as agriculture has dominated land usage age. In the Middle Ages for example large tracts of land where devoted to having little forests as a replenishing source of wood, various useful plant species, and wild game.

Less well known energy sources like whale oil and animal dung are also down in absolute terms.

Have you used any whale oil candles recently?

Energy sources do get replaced. Just not every time.