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There's literally nothing about economics in what I wrote/quoted. That said, if you can figure out how to decouple planetary economic growth - as in, people's
by baq 3y ago
There's literally nothing about economics in what I wrote/quoted.
That said, if you can figure out how to decouple planetary economic growth - as in, people's lives on the planet getting better, which is the point of having an economy at all, I guess - from planetary energy production growth, I'm listening. I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country; I know that past performance does not predict future results, but we can comfortably say that people need to consume energy in advanced economies to move themselves and goods around, to heat homes and to run their factories and there are certain theoretical thermodynamic efficiency limits to all those things. In some cases, we already have technology operating close to those limits.
- api 3y ago> I've yet to see an economy-rich energy-poor country Past performance usually doesn't predict future results. I'm not aware of any good or service that is not subject to diminishing returns from increased consumption. Keep increasing energy consumption and you start hitting other limiting factors like the availability of other resources, labor, population growth, food, etc. Energy can help with some of those but not all of them and not in a linear relationship. Eventually you hit the ultimate limiter: diminishing marginal utility of wealth itself. At some point you start to max out as a human. There are countries that consume more energy than the USA that are actually poorer and their higher consumption is a function of either climate (lots of HVAC) or the use of old inefficient technology (in which case poverty actually increases consumption). It really looks like the ultimate limits to growth (on Earth) are demand side limits to growth due to leveling off of population. Humans have fewer kids when they have more wealth and/or see more humans around.