[trhway]

>a future society that is rebuilding itself wouldn’t have energy be able to advance far enough for it to matter.

even Ancient Greeks could have put some copper windings and iron together to produce electricity from wind. Add mirrors concentrated on a boiler and you can generate from solar. Availability of fossil fuels may as well be a damnation of our current civilization.

[kibwen]

Wind power, yes. But anything that requires boiling water is tough without high-quality metalworking, which is tough without easy availability to energy. The ancient Greeks has toy machines driven by boilers, but there's a reason the steam engine didn't arise until the industrial revolution.