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Well, if you want to be optimistic, I think we got coal from lignin/wood being uneatable for hundreds of millions of years (I think). So wood would stack up, n
by oblio 2y ago
Well, if you want to be optimistic, I think we got coal from lignin/wood being uneatable for hundreds of millions of years (I think).
So wood would stack up, not rot, get covered by dirt and turned into coal due to physical processes, not biological ones.
So coal deposits of the existing magnitudes couldn't be created now.
- benchmarkist 2y agoI am very optimistic. I don't remember where I read it but whatever remains after the current industrial civilization will not have access to the energy resources necessary for reindustrialization. Might have been Derrick Jensen but I can't remember which book exactly.
- shiroiushi 2y agoI have no idea what book might have first explored this idea, but it's a very common theme online whenever this type of discussion comes up: someone will inevitably point out that any post-human-extinction civilization that might evolve on Earth won't have such easy access to energy as we've had.
- benchmarkist 2y agoIt's obvious once you think about what enables our current industrial activity: millions of years of biological growth and sedimentation. But it's all equivalent to solar radiation that was incident on the planet over millions of years which we have burned up in less than a few hundred. Once you understand this basic reality the logical conclusion is very clear and obvious: the current rate of consumption is unsustainable. The obvious next question is what can be done about it but no one wants to think about it so it never gets addressed. Presumably someone higher up the political and economic hierarchy is thinking about it and they will manage things as best as possible but based on how people reacted to COVID lockdowns I'm not sure they know what they're doing.