The balancing act that we have to pull whenever free energy (in the form of petrol) starts to show signs of depletion will have to be played not at the pre-indu

The balancing act that we have to pull whenever free energy (in the form of petrol) starts to show signs of depletion will have to be played not at the pre-industrial 1000 million people level, but at the current 8000 million. That is a very difficult act to pull - specially without the jackpot that petrol has meant for humankind. Can you make the transition to nuclear or to another energy source? Maybe, but that's far from sure. We do not even know if nuclear (or any other energy source) is a good enough substitute for petrol at the global level, not even clear that it is an energy source (it has a much lower eroei than petrol, maybe even negative if you account for disposal costs). Maybe everything plays out well and in some decades we are flying our tesla-jets with rechargeable batteries powered by clean australian uranium, but that seems far-fetched. And even then we might have not yet solved the demographics problem, meaning it has just been kicked down the road for another while.