This projection seems to hinge entirely on the idea that you can't build solar panels, wind farms and hydro dams without cheap oil. As those have only become m

This projection seems to hinge entirely on the idea that you can't build solar panels, wind farms and hydro dams without cheap oil. As those have only become more economical as oil has become more expensive, I find it particularly difficult to buy into long-run projections based upon that unexplored/unexplained/unjustified assumption. Setting up humanity as reliant on fusion, or massive increases in new energy generation in general, also strikes me as a red herring. Likely: we just won't need it. Even if (this time) it really is ready in ~50 years, guess what? Population is going to peak and begin to fall in ~50 years as more countries become wealthy, healthy and secure enough to make large families a poor reproductive strategy. And is there any reason to expect that energy demand is going to increase fast enough with a static-to-falling population (in the future) to match or outstrip the growth of energy demand with a growing population (today)? Western per-capita energy use is flat. [1] So I don't see how. Absent some trend of every nation transitioning to US-level per-capita energy use [2], the energy needed by the ~9B humans living in 2050 likely represents the peak of world energy demand. If you're going to predicate the collapse of civilization on a shortfall of energy generation, you need to show how that happens in the next 50 years, which is well within the capability of existing coal, oil and gas resources. Further, an assumption of a war-wracked world hand-waves away the question of how on earth nuclear-armed powers are able to go to war with one another. This has been an unsolved problem in modern geopolitics for nearly 70 years now. These powers can certainly squabble via proxies. But, by definition, no major harm can be on the line lest it escalate directly into the conflict no-one can win. And existential threat is the major harm. So how could a nation decide that certain destruction is at all preferable to incremental destruction? [1] Some countries are at a higher level than others, but all the western countries are essentially flat. chart: http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/international/energy%20per%20capita.png http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/international/en... from: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its-official-western-europeans-have-more-cars-per-person-than-americans/261108/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/its... [2] Any assumption that every nation will transition to US-levels of per-capita energy use seem unjustified by the data. European and Japanese levels have been flat to falling-modestly for some time. It's much more likely that US energy use will begin to fall, as suburban sprawl and huge houses become increasingly uneconomical and we move closer together, drive less, build more sensibly, telecommute more, etc.