13 ms·

> We have not "deforested the planet". What are you running on about? Take a look at the before and after pictures. Forest covered half of North America. It's

> We have not "deforested the planet". What are you running on about? Take a look at the before and after pictures. Forest covered half of North America. It's all gone. Prior to that, covered most of Europe, the British Isles. We've deforested it. It takes something on the order a million years for that to recover, supposing it does. > If you have energy you can make fossil fuels from air. We're talking about a scenario where they won't have the energy to do that. It's a bootstrapping problem. Everyone commenting here is saying "but that's ok, we'll have all we need to make this fancy stuff"... When the problem itself is posed as "what if we no longer have all we need to make fancy stuff".

tsotha 12y ago
>Take a look at the before and after pictures. Forest covered half of North America. It's all gone. Pictures of North America? What pictures? North America is more heavily forested than it was 100 years ago. >We're talking about a scenario where they won't have the energy to do that. It's a bootstrapping problem. We can do it with nuclear power. Maybe even renewables, depending on what happens with battery technology. >When the problem itself is posed as "what if we no longer have all we need to make fancy stuff" That will never happen. There are options. It's just a question of what makes the most sense.