[ehnto]

Perhaps surprisingly I do agree with you, I often talk about civilization having a Peak Comfort and that we should try to find contentment and sustainability over driving for progress toward some yet defined goal.

Two things come into the conversation though, while some of us have probably hit peak comfort it is not exactly universal. The second is we still haven't solved the energy problem, and it is us getting in our own way that is doing it. A megaproject of some kind can kind of sublime the status quo and make grand leaps forward in spite of ourselves. Maybe not a geothermal plant harnessing the earths's subterranean magma, but truly massive renewables installations or just actually doing nuclear power at last.

I hear what you are saying though. I would love to see some kind of utopian near future megaprojects solve the energy problem, but that is with the assumption that we did our homework, and our current track record is pretty bleak in that regard.

[jacquesm]

That's all agreed on, but in principle the energy problem is solved: we're quite literally bathing in energy for 12 hours every day for half the planet on average. We just suck at collecting that energy. And that is a problem that you might be able to solve without such massive environmental impact as what we've seen so far. More so if we focus on conservation first, so those 'massive renewables installations' are exactly where it is at in my book.

And your point that comfort (and even food) isn't universal is also well taken, if anything that should be our first order of battle: to establish some stable and sustainable quality of life and then to go about ensuring that everybody has access to that level. Of course our political and financial institutions are not well geared towards such solutions and that is where most of the challenge will come from. On a technical level I don't think that's unsolvable if you focus on quality and sustainability.