We are talking about drying clothes. The sun (and wind) _is_ abundant and free for at least some part of year (yes, depending on your location). I'm not talking about not using dryers any more at all, but that it is quite easy to not always use one. And most people in 'developed nations' still don't use one.
I've just found some data for Germany: 43% of households in Germany have had a dryer in 2021.
https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/516868/umfrag...
In the UK the numbers are higher: 58% of households in 2018
https://www.statista.com/statistics/289140/tumble-dryers-in-...
Numbers from the 90s:
USA: 72% Belgium: 39% UK: 32% Netherlands: 27% Switzerland: 27% West Germany: 17% France: 12% Italy: 10% Spain: 5%
https://www.infoplease.com/world/economic-statistics/percent...
> Energy use is not the problem.
Not necessarily directly, no. But somebody needs to build and maintain 'stuff' that generates, 'transports' and uses this energy. So in the end there is a need for more of many other resources too.
Currently, there is no path to generating abundant and cheap energy without fossil fuels, and fossil fuels only seem cheap because they're not pricing in global warming.
All other forms of generating power are more expensive overall, or much more limited by other issues. Solar is very cheap, but having enough solar + storage to power a northerly country for a bad winter is decidedly not. Not to mention, the cheap storage solutions (batteries) don't actually scale up if you want to move entirely to solar + wind (there simply isn't enough lithium in the world, or at least not enough mined per year to achieve 100% solar + wind in a few decades).
That's absurd. Energy use is not the problem. Burning carbon fuel we dug out of the ground and spewing the carbon into the atmosphere is the problem.
I want a future where no human has to waste time thinking about drying their clothes, because that's a more interesting world.
I want a future of abundant and cheap energy. Why don't you think we can get there?