> So... You're saying we can increase energy consumption by 20,000X before we encounter hard engineering problems No, I think we would run into serious issues

> So... You're saying we can increase energy consumption by 20,000X before we encounter hard engineering problems No, I think we would run into serious issues already at 100 times current use, or "1% of an extra sun" worth of power. And that's only 230 years away at 2% growth rate. Or even just 60 years at 8% growth rate. (That's what oil growth was like before the oil shocks in the seventies, so plausibly what would happen if we got something like cheap fusion.)