So I've come around to the belief that we're on the verge of another massive civilization-level change that will be transformative. Think flight, electricity, m

So I've come around to the belief that we're on the verge of another massive civilization-level change that will be transformative. Think flight, electricity, motorized transport, plastic, writing, agriculture, domestication, firearms, etc (and no I'm not just listing techs from Civ). That change will be when we have cheaper mass power generation than fossil fuels. The reason this will be transformative is that a lot of problems basically go away when this happens. Take burning hydrocarbons for energy. We can make hydrocarbons from the atmosphere. It's simple chemistry. It just makes no sense to spend hydrocarbons to make hydrocarbons from air. That's a net loss of power. If wind or solar (both of which have problems with inconsistent power generation, which is an issue of using them for the power grid). Batteries are of course one solution to this. Another is making fuel from air and using it when it's calm or at night or cloudy (respectively) to smooth out power output. Bringing this back to sand, we can make sand. It's really just ground up stone and we have plenty of stone. Current sand is made from millions of years of erosion by water. But we can make more sand. It's just cost-prohibitive to do so now because energy is too expensive. On a side note, I honestly don't think humanity can pull back on carbon emissions. Trying to change behaviour is largely going to be fruitless. What will change behaviour is other power sources being cheaper so that's what we need to strive towards.