> If it were that easy, it would have happened. This idea of automatic progress is one of the great fallacies of our time. Things don't get done unless action

> If it were that easy, it would have happened. This idea of automatic progress is one of the great fallacies of our time. Things don't get done unless action is taken. Progress is volitional and requires effort whether it's at the scale of a single individual or an entire global economy. If action is not taken the status quo prevails by inertia. It might be cliche but I have to cite SpaceX and their reusable rocket cores as a classic example. Here is a video of a VTVL rocket called the DC-X created and flown in the early-mid 1990s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39cjZTCay24 We could have had reusable rockets by 2000, but unfortunately the project was cancelled. Instead we endured another 10 years of paper studies supposedly "proving" that reusable rockets couldn't be economical. These studies were funded and produced by people with a financial vested interest in disposable rockets. Nuclear and renewable energy absolutely can replace fossil fuels. There is no physical reason this can't happen and with scale they could be cost competitive or perhaps even cheaper. It's not happening because nobody is pushing it hard enough to overcome the inertia of vested interests and... well... plain old inertia. Edit: another way of thinking of this kind of thing is the common "has anyone called the police?" scenario. Imagine someone gets shot on the street. A crowd of people gathers around. Nobody does anything because surely someone has called the police, so the victim dies waiting for help.