Bruce:
I don’t believe in a future where we run to Mars, or eat all synthetic foods, or eat crops grown in warehouse of LED lights, or have unlimited energy to run everything. I believe in a future where things break we can’t fix, I believe those who do live will live in a world with less carrying capacity than the one we live in due to soil loss, groundwater depletion, forest losses, hypoxic ocean expansion, and depletion of all fossil fuel resources. Those of us who manage to inhabit the future world I envision will live much like our great grandparents.
Sig:
But a relatively tiny area of solar panels [shown below ⬇️ for the world, EU, and Germany] can provide all the energy the world’s population needs to flourish today, and there’s plenty of area and potential for additional solar and wind. As Tony shows, batteries keep getting cheaper — they’re also becoming less toxic and more recyclable. Short of planetary destruction, there’s no reason to believe we can’t generate as much or more energy than we need in the future, for a population in the billions.
I find myself partially agreeing with both, yes we can fix the energy system, but we are not on the path to do it
in time. Look at any chart posted in one of the energy threads, while renewables are growing fast fossil fuel use is actually growing. And recall a lot of the world population still lives in energy poverty. And population still grows.
Why is renewable energy not growing fast enough? Perhaps lack of priority, takes time to produce the required resources, system inertia, lack of interconnects, AGW denialism, and more. But the fact is, growth rate is insufficient and high fossil fuels use will remain with us for several decades.
But even if we fix energy eventually, all the other problems will remain, along with the accumulated AGW until the - further exacerbating the problems and reducing carrying capacity.
Mars is irrelevant, dreaming of it does not cause the current issues, and settling a million people there does not fix Earth carrying capacity.
In one sense I am much more pessimistic than both, due to the transition period being too abrupt. When carrying capacity goes down sharply to 1-3 billion, the remaining billions, urbanites who cannot get their food, will not lie down on their beds to die. They will raid the farms, reducing actual population far below the theoretical carrying capacity.
What could bring about a smooth transition and save us and our children from such nightmare scenarios is a sharp slowdown in global childbirth. Better to have unborn billions than billions dying.
In this sense, Tony Seba is doing humanity somewhat of a disservice, giving a sense of security where none should be, thereby encouraging childbirth.