[roenxi]

One option would be to set up a big industrial district. Call it Shenzhen II. Cheap power and some industrialist-friendly tax laws and maybe the US could keep pace with the Chinese. People'd start building and finding uses for that power extremely quickly.

I find it very much laugh-or-you'd-cry that the US would rather have Yellowstone winding up for a big one than allow geothermal power projects near a national park. Talk about catastrophically bureaucratic priorities.

[habinero]

It's not a case of "would they rather", that's ridiculous.

It's flat out not feasible to do and wouldn't work even if we did. The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.

It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".

[roenxi]

> The scale and forces are far too massive for us to do anything about it.

The scale and forces behind fossil fuels are both larger and it looks like we'll have managed to run through all the easily available stuff in about a century. "The scale is really big!" isn't an argument that something can't be done. Modern humans have done a bunch of stuff that was on an unimaginable scale 500 years ago. You'd have been arguing the moon landing was impossible a century ago because the forces involved are too large.

We're not going to overcome technical challenges by banning attempts to overcome them.

> It's like saying "why don't they stop earthquakes by removing earthquake faults".

That should be an option that gets explored. I doubt the economics will work out, but if we figure out a way to extract the energy building up in fault-lines that would be a win-win-win scenario for everyone involved.