People who argue for artificially curbing ourselves are counter productive (no pun intended) but they're also not worth arguing with. (Have you met an environm

People who argue for artificially curbing ourselves are counter productive (no pun intended) but they're also not worth arguing with. (Have you met an environmentalist who doesn't wear mass-produced clothing? I've met one. One.) The whole point of curbing energy use is not to live in the dark in a hovel. Vaclav Smil points out that people in the USA in the 1960's had a pretty good standard of living, that we haven't appreciably exceeded, despite using a much more sustainable level of energy back then. Most of our problems today are already the result of unimaginable power. Stripping the oceans of fish while filling them with plastic, poisoning the entire atmosphere in a variety of ways (CFCs depleting the ozone layer, lead in the petrol, etc...), destruction of natural habitat leading to breakdowns in large-scale ecosystems (salmon bring nutrients from the oceans deep into the land, etc...) I could go on and on. Energy without wisdom will eventually fail. Sure we should have interstellar travel and colonization, we should have maglev super-fast trains that crisscross the globe, flying cities, etc. Those things are neat, and I am on board. That doesn't change the fact that, to date, our energy systems are hugely wasteful and polluting. We're already heating the oceans! We've got to do better, and I feel that the OP is talking past the point, not helping, y'know?