[blake1]

Your first point is not supported by the data. The US Energy Information Agency keeps track of this[1], and the per capita energy use peaked around 2000.

And we are much better at running an energy-efficient economy: energy use/real $ GDP has halved in the last century.

The trend may not continue. People might start to do much more air travel (which would require massive runway building). Global warming might increase the need for AC. But my intuition is that there is some limit to the amount of energy one person can consume.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_13.pdf

[wnkrshm]

It is good to see that the per capita trend has reversed, maybe if the global population would not increase steadily we may actually not increase energy consumption steadily.

Edit: I found an interesting nature article[0] that looks at different correlations of population and consumption to identify if there is an anthropocene epoch. There are pretty clear-cut trends but who knows, maybe Earth's population will actually reach a kind of steady state.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-020-00029-y.pdf

[eru]

Global population is expected to plateau soonish.

[pfdietz]

> the per capita energy use peaked around 2000.

1980, actually.

[neutronicus]

Yeah, capital-E Energy is mostly for capital-W Work and thermodynamics. Once you refrigerate your living space and don't walk anywhere and everything you want is brought to your door what else are you going to do?

[Someone]

I’m not sure whether you’re serious, but:

Bigger cars? Supersonic city trips to the other side of the world? Weekends in Antarctica? A week in one of SpaceX’s hotels? High-resolution screens on every wall of your home, plus the AC needed to keep your house cool? Reshape a mountain to improve your view? Transform lead into gold? Mine bitcoin?

If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature. At best, the world would become a gigantic park.

[TeMPOraL]

> If energy were free, I foresee accelerated destruction of nature.

Perhaps the reverse, eventually. If costs of space travel dropped enough, we could push polluting industry out into orbit and further, and start repairing Earth. It's impossible now, but if there were little difference on the margin for the businesses between working on the surface and upwell, then businesses would hesitantly say "ah, what the hell, we'll do our stuff up there, you go ahead with your silly environmental programs if that floats your boat". Social progress happens when the market stops caring about it, and doesn't resist it anymore.

[Someone]

In a world where energy is free, I don’t see polluting industry as a problem. What pollution is there that can’t be prevented if you can spend as much energy as you want in recycling stuff? If you try hard enough, about everything can be taken apart into its chemical elements.

The problem would be the demand for resources. Yes, there’s the asteroid belt, but it is far away. Would we get there before we would have dug up the earth? Maybe.

[eru]

The market is very much an engine for social progress. See eg https://www.econlib.org/jim-crow-more-racist-than-the-railro...

> Jim Crow laws established apartheid, that is, legally enforced segregation. Railroad companies provide an interesting historical example of business incentives. These private companies were often willing, against the political correctness of the times, to sell tickets to both blacks and whites and to not segregate their customers in different cars or compartments. Poor whites and poor blacks purchased second-class tickets, while rich whites and occasionally rich blacks rode in first-class cars. The situation was far from perfect, and violence sometimes erupted, but it was better than the segregationist state-enforced laws that followed.

> A historian of populism observes:

>> More than any other institution, train cars and railroad stations exemplified the modern dilemma of the racial order. They were places where mobile, unsupervised, anonymous travelers met in close quarters. Making the situation more explosive, those whites, including most farmers, who could not afford a first-class ticket met blacks on equal terms. In contrast to the workplace where blacks served white employers, or in the supply store where blacks owed debts to white merchants, in a railroad car blacks and whites paid the same fare for the same right to a seat. Accordingly, whites made the railroads a primary target of the new segregation laws. Reform-minded southerners considered these laws a mark of modern and progressive race relations. (Charles Postel, The Populist Vision, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 178)

[wnkrshm]

But, didn't the market trade the same people as property? How is the market an engine for social progress there? Isn't that a bit cherry picked?

[eru]

Well, basically the 'market' is just people trading. People react to incentives and have preferences.

Luckily, people are hypocrites, so they will say that we should 'buy American', but then happily engage in free trade. Or they say that we should segregate races, but then greed dictates that it's more profitable not to discriminate like that.

Yes, if people are bought and sold, that also happens on a market. Alas.

Apropos that topic, you might like https://pseudoerasmus.com/2014/09/05/antebellum_ussouth_cott...

[wnkrshm]

This is an interesting read as to the possible caveats of fusion power [0]. It's interesting, whether one reaches the same conclusion as the plasma physicist who wrote the article or not.

[0] https://thebulletin.org/2017/04/fusion-reactors-not-what-the...