[JumpCrisscross]

> human civilization has only been exploiting oil since ~ early 1900s.

Solar is within oil's error bars on a cost per kWh basis. Sure, there are kinks in storage and transport to work out. But the fundamental cost of energy doesn't look likely to change in the coming century.

[antisthenes]

What I meant is that oil enabled fundamentally new things like personal car transportation, plastics, space age materials and cheap and convenient gas heating.

Solar can still provide all of that, but it's not a revolution, just a substitute.

[guhidalg]

Does that cost include the externalities of how the oil actually used? I don't believe solar (+ all the other renewables) is equivalent to drilling for oil, piping it thousands of miles, refining it, then burning it somewhere. Happy to be proven wrong but this doesn't pass my smell test.