[walleeee]

> None will "run out" as in there is no more available, only that the remaining ones are too expensive to extract at the moment.

Right, the issue is cost of extraction (in materials, energy, and externalities, the only real currencies), not exhaustion of the reserves. I think Simon would argue 1) that the degree to which the current economy depends on fossil resources (e.g. for metal-working; how do we reach the required temperatures without melting an electrically-powered heating element?) has not been grasped by policy-makers or the public, and 2) that we are already in energy decline, exacerbated by ongoing failure of ecosystem services. In other words, he thinks we have bled too much momentum and triggered too many blowbacks to "level off" at current living standards, if that were even a viable path forward (given the rate at which we are destroying the biological basis for human life, it is not).