| I'm just going to say that you should research this a bit. How much sunk cost do we have out there in fossil-fuel-based infrastructure and technology? How much would it cost in energy to replace all that sunk cost? Where's the investment capital going to come from for all that in a shrinking economy? Many people thought we'd hit "peak oil" in the 2000s. They were wrong. That's the nature of bubbles -- they always go higher than anyone anticipates. The amount of oil we produce will continue to rise with demand on a kind of stair-step function until it doesn't. The people who predict the bubble popping always sound like fools until they don't. Then they sound like prophets, but then it's too late. When will this point be? Next decade? Four decades from now? Nobody really knows. You're comfortable with that? Do you have kids? Also keep in mind that we might be able to keep stretching it out very far if we adopt things like coal to liquids, gas to liquids, etc. But as we do that, the environmental damage will increase exponentially as will the CO2 emissions per unit energy generated. If you think we have a CO2 problem now... I would think our recent experience with economic bubbles would provide some sense of how these things unfold. Bubbles make everyone look like a fool in turn. First they make the skeptics and "bears" look like fools, and then they pop and make the believers look like fools. Fossil fuel extraction -- the self-catalyzed exponential utilization of a finite resource -- behaves quite a lot like an economic bubble and will ultimately end the same way because physics. The question is whether we will have moved on enough by then that the blow is cushioned. That's an existential question IMHO. If the answer is "no," there won't be much of a future. |