[_heimdall]

We don't have that tech though.

Its a reasonable hope that we could discover a new energy source that can produce orders of magnitude more energy with even less impact than today's sources, but that is just a hope. In the meantime we would be committing ourselves to a new, much higher baseline of energy needs whether we make that discovery or not.

[jjk7]

Nuclear exists.

[barryrandall]

It does, but the general public does not seem to believe anyone can operate it safely enough to allow it in their communities. That position may or may not be supported by facts, but that only matters in countries where politicians don't answer to the electorate.

[_heimdall]

Sure, nuclear may fit the bill. That avoids needing a new advancement if we're happy enough with the environmental impact of nuclear generation, but it doesn't avoid all the external costs beyond just the nuclear reaction.

Reactors themselves take a large amount of resources, some rare, to build. Infrastructure is another huge resource suck, all that copper has to come from somewhere. Nuclear has the nice benefit of being on-demand, so it does at least dodge resources needed for energy storage.