3 ms·
There's a very real risk that climate change could knock us back globally to a pre-agricultural level. If that happens, there's almost certainly no coming back:
by regularfry 6y ago
There's a very real risk that climate change could knock us back globally to a pre-agricultural level. If that happens, there's almost certainly no coming back: the only way we know how to get to our current level of civilization is by extracting substantially all the easily-extractable energy from the Earth's crust. We only get to do that once. This, today, could well be as good as it ever gets, for the only tree of life that we know for sure exists in the universe.
- Retric 6y agoSurface level coal deposits are available across much of the globe, but let’s ignore that. Agriculture can go a long way with animals, wood, and stone. Extracting energy from wind and rivers is easily attainable from that basis. At which point we would have serious energy to work with. Hydro electric dams provide 6.1% of the total U.S. electricity. That is plenty of energy to kick start industrial manufacturing and get to wide spread solar power. The next civilization may be extracting most of it’s materials from our cities, but that’s an advantage if anything.