A 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 no

A 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.