[rms]

Of course energy is scarce! We can't afford to send very heavy things into space. We can't send a radio signal into space that is so loud that you can be sure as hell everything within 100 light years is going to know we are here. We can't build superstructures, even if we got rid of the military. We could probably build a huge particle accelerator if we got rid of the military though...

[NSX2]

Well, if we use energy for stupid, wasteful projects then of course energy is scarce; if we use it more effectively/efficiently, then less so. It's all based on how/what we use it for.

>We can't build superstructures, even if we got rid of the military.

Research Dubai. They're building the world's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and fourth greatest structures at the same time. The #1 building is almost twice the height of those towers in malasia.

> We could probably build a huge particle accelerator if we got rid of the military though..

personally making scooters and small hatchbacks sexy like they do in Europe would be a good idea, as would coordinating flights better to not have half-full jets wasting fuel taking off ...

[rms]

Energy is fundamentally scarce. I am thinking about much larger scale uses of energy than anything humans are doing right now. Check out the link to the Kardashev Scale posted above, we need orders of magnitude more energy to build something like a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

[NSX2]

Okay, I'm talking about energy for a state of practical human affairs, not building a death star / second sun or whatever that thing is.