As a civilization, we're like a trust fund kid, blowing through our inheritance in a wild spending spree. The wealth? A planetwide pool of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels.
We're so used to this wealth, we can't even contemplate what would happen if the balance ran down to zero. Our entire civilization is blind to the nature of our energy sources, and their use in making all of the things we use on a daily basis, including our food.
It's so entrenched, that I struggle to think of a metaphor to use that will get past the default stance here of "yeah, but your example is wrong because"
The amount of Energy Returned On Investment (EROI) used to be 100:1 prior to WWII in the US, we're now down to 15:1. The last civilization wide kicking of the can down the road has already happened
We're fracking the source rocks that would otherwise lead to conventional oil in millions of years. These wells decline at 40% per year. Once we stop drilling them, because the EROI gets too low, there's no new oil left.
We need to take advantage of this second chance, to wake up, and figure out better sources of energy and a way of making them work. The days of an always on grid with a constant fixed price of electricity, regardless of time of day, weather, etc.. are at an end.
We've got a generation to do this, I'd rather we make use of the wealth we have, rather than see it all burned up, and watching billions die in "The Great Simplification" that results as we no longer have the energy to burn to keep everyone not involved in farming fed.
If we gather a community of purpose, who all acknowledge the situation, and work to fix it, we can have an amazing future, instead of collapse.
This is the same answer I used in the other thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32100524
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As a civilization, we're like a trust fund kid, blowing through our inheritance in a wild spending spree. The wealth? A planetwide pool of stored sunlight in the form of fossil fuels.
We're so used to this wealth, we can't even contemplate what would happen if the balance ran down to zero. Our entire civilization is blind to the nature of our energy sources, and their use in making all of the things we use on a daily basis, including our food.
It's so entrenched, that I struggle to think of a metaphor to use that will get past the default stance here of "yeah, but your example is wrong because"
The amount of Energy Returned On Investment (EROI) used to be 100:1 prior to WWII in the US, we're now down to 15:1. The last civilization wide kicking of the can down the road has already happened
We're fracking the source rocks that would otherwise lead to conventional oil in millions of years. These wells decline at 40% per year. Once we stop drilling them, because the EROI gets too low, there's no new oil left.
We need to take advantage of this second chance, to wake up, and figure out better sources of energy and a way of making them work. The days of an always on grid with a constant fixed price of electricity, regardless of time of day, weather, etc.. are at an end.
We've got a generation to do this, I'd rather we make use of the wealth we have, rather than see it all burned up, and watching billions die in "The Great Simplification" that results as we no longer have the energy to burn to keep everyone not involved in farming fed.
If we gather a community of purpose, who all acknowledge the situation, and work to fix it, we can have an amazing future, instead of collapse.