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> might have to switch to solar/wind/wave You mean our main power generation tools until the 1900s?

• Filligree 5y ago
  And it wasn't enough power. Economic development is largely built on increasing accessible power. We have alternatives to coal and oil now, but back in the 1900s we didn't. Those are both made from dead trees, which for millions of years simply didn't rot; this simultaneously cooled the planet down, dramatically weakening hurricane patterns for all time until... now, while also storing millions of years' worth of solar power for our use. A lot of otherwise habitable planets very likely didn't go through that phase.
• guerrilla 5y ago
  No, solar wasn't one and the other's have radically increased in efficiency and decreased in price.