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>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and
by TigeriusKirk 6y ago
>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead.
There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one.
Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us.
Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's long past time to accept that energy usage will go up, not down.
- kenmacd 6y agoIt seems this excludes increases in efficiencies. For example today we have lighting that uses a small fraction of the power of a couple decades ago. Plus we're nearing peak populations, after which the number of humans will be going down.
- _jal 6y agoEnergy efficiencies do not decrease energy use, you just get more of the cheaper thing. I agree more with the second point; the way that I'd say that is humans as a species will never self-moderate energy use.
- samvher 6y agoObligatory mention of Jevons Paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- CharlesW 6y agoThank you, I'm one of today's lucky 10,000. https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
- epistasis 6y agoThis is false, energy efficiencies do decrease energy use, in most situations. Jevon's paradox is the exception, not the rule. For example, increasing fuel efficiency of cars does decrease energy use, because fuel cost is not the limiting factor foe most car travel. Similarly, more efficient lighting, more efficient home space heating and water heating, and better weatherization of homes, all increase energy efficiency and decrease energy use. There's only so much lighting I would ever want to use, only so much heat, only so much time I want to spend in a car. Energy efficiency is one of the most powerful tools we have to reduce pollution, because it makes all the other things easier.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y agoAs an anecdote: if you take an ant population (or any controllable population), and put it into a confined space with constrained resources, the population eventually dies due to one of two things: 1. Elimination of resources 2. Excessive waste product (in this case, excrement and bodily wastes; pollution)
- epistasis 6y agoYou seem to be talking about the need of a species to rely on a greater ecosystem in order to survive. However, I'm not sure how that relates to demand elasticity and energy efficiency. Perhaps you could be a bit more explicit?
- jjk166 6y agoYeah, and if the sun turns off and stops pumping 174 PW into our system, we'd be pretty screwed. Luckily we do not live in a confined space with constrained resources.
- revax 6y ago>For example, increasing fuel efficiency of cars does decrease energy use MPG from passenger car didn't decreased since 1976 despite huge advancement in fuel efficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CAFE_mpg_curve_from_NHTSA%27s_Summary_of_Fuel_Economy_Performance,_December_2014.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CAFE_mpg_curve_from_NHTSA...
- porb121 6y agoMPG is a measure of efficiency, so it makes sense that it increases. To support your argument, you would need to demonstrate a corresponding increase in vehicle miles traveled per car, so that total gallons of fuel burned (i.e. energy) is constant or increasing.
- epistasis 6y agoThere's a lot going on with US gasoline consumption: 1) land use decisions are pushing people further from workplaces 2) consumers are switching from the "car" class of vehicle to "light truck" which is negating fuel efficiency improvements [1]. There's a lot going on here, from people getting larger vehicles for perceived safety, to better comfort, to just having more money to spend on larger vehicles. Plus, all those people who think they need a truck despite using the bed once or twice per year. 3) Demand for gasoline is incredibly inelastic in response to price, with huge price spikes having almost no change in gallons of gasoline even as consumption in dollars spike [2] [1] https://thenextweb.com/shift/2021/01/12/despite-ev-growth-gas-mileage-of-us-vehicle-fleets-has-tanked/ https://thenextweb.com/shift/2021/01/12/despite-ev-growth-ga... [2] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40893 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=40893
- bushbaba 6y agoMost energy usage isn’t residential in nature. It’s likely our industrial needs will continue to increase even with a smaller population
- plutonorm 6y agoIs transitioning slowly back to a hunter gatherer life style morally a bad idea? If so why?
- danmaz74 6y agoHow many billion people would need to die to make that sustainable?
- aardvarkr 6y agoThis sounds like hyperbole but it’s the honest truth. Billions would die due to food shortages. Our modern farming system is incredible at its job of feeding 7 billion people.
- dagss 6y ago...and yet 1/3rd of the food is thrown away/perish globally. There is a lot of excessive waste / inefficiencies due to energy being -- relatively -- cheap. If energy prices soar, many inefficiencies will get more attention. Like, if food becomes more expensive we would stop throwing away 1/3 of it. (And more houses would get proper insulation. And so on.)
- iggldiggl 6y agoAt least part of which is a necessary hedge against possible years with a bad harvest, though. A temporary shortage of toilet paper or even microchips is one thing, but you most certainly wouldn't want the same thing to happen with your food supply.
- PaulAJ 6y agoA pure hunter gatherer lifestyle is going to support a percent or less of current population. So you are basically going to have to prohibit the vast majority of the population from having children for a century or so. It also means abandoning all technology. Good luck persuading people to go along with that.
- 6y ago
- fnord77 6y ago> There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases sure there is. reduce the population by a factor of 10.
- occz 6y agoAny true malthusian will of course voluntarily take the first step and remove themselves. Right?
- samvher 6y agoA lot of energy is currently used for low-utility purposes (e.g. flying for meetings). There are also major opportunities for reduce-reuse-recycle that would not result in significant decreases in quality of life. I'm all for aiming for high energy availability in the long run, but the idea that we can just keep increasing our usage monotonically (without a temporary reduction to get our shit sorted out) seems like the dangerous pipe dream to me. Edit because I think maybe the tone sounded a bit short/unfriendly: I see a carbon tax as a necessary step in taking care of our issues, and my expectation is that this would reduce usage of fossil fuels quite significantly, temporarily. It seems likely that our energy budget would move more towards high-value-per-joule activities such as information technology and away from things like transportation. And I think this is a necessary step - people are currently quite careless about energy, especially about usage of fossil fuels, and I think if they become aware of its cost across a variety of activities they will adjust accordingly.
- rebuilder 6y agoSurely we can agree that growth in total energy usage must stop at some point? With continuous growth, you run into the limit of the earth's ability to radiate heat into space, or later on, the energy produced by the sun, in worryingly short timeframes.
- nerbert 6y agoWe can agree to talk about it again once we’re exploiting the energy of the entire galaxy.
- rebuilder 6y agoWithout FTL, I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a "we" doing galactic conquest, it'll be a bunch of societies who never talk to each other, or even separate species given the timescales involved.
- stcredzero 6y agoBasically, any scientifically/1st principles viable technology that might save us from doing extensive desperation geo-engineering deserves some investment, from a cost/benefit point of view. Otherwise, we might learn that we coined the name "Antropocene" too early. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Agreed. There would need to be crushing totalitarian rule over everyone on Earth to prevent progress, and that wouldn't be stable long term. Otherwise, competition by competing powers will inevitably result in a Kardashev 2 civilization. Here's why: Space solar power and fusion power are a couple of serious tech/economic inflection points. Once humanity's technology and our self-organization reach that level of capability, we are literally within striking distance of threatening any star system in our galaxy with huge destructive energies. We only need one of the two for this to be the case. Fusion is unnecessary at this point. If someone can establish large-scale industry on the Moon and the asteroids, solar power will be every bit as good as fusion in many regards. (At large enough scales, solar power is fusion power, basically.) Modern geopolitics are dominated by the logistics of energy transport and production. It has been this way since before World War II. The logistics of fueling factories, ships, then tanks and airplanes has absolutely dominated strategic thinking since even before that time. The lengths to which the allies went to provide the fuel to run the invasion of Europe were absolute feats of engineering, planning, and intelligence/disinformation. So just think ahead a bit: what if, instead of having to fuel your military, you could instead beam power to outposts, which would use that power to synthesize fuel? The side that can do that would have huge logistical advantages, which would also be strategic advantages. (There's a compelling reason why submarines and aircraft carriers are nuclear powered.) Going further, once we are at the level of space industry at scale, the Earth becomes just one location in a much larger context, whose available energy dwarfs the available energy on Earth by many orders of magnitude. At those levels of available energy, we could build things like Shkadov thrusters and Nicoll-Dyson beams. At that point, we'd have the hypothetical ability to move stars and build devices that could fry the biospheres off of planets in the bulk of our own galaxy.