The world population was at about a billion in 1804 and we do have better technologies today, which should increase the carrying capacity quite a lot. Also a lot of countries have falling populations already and fertility rates are below replacement on all continents but Africa today.
Can you name a few better technologies, which don’t depend on fossil fuels (renewable energy sources do, as do fertilizers, industrial agriculture, transport and others).
I don’t know whether you’re right about inevitable dependencies, but surely reducing fossil fuel use to the essentials would still be a huge and worthwhile improvement? It feels like your argument is needlessly suggesting an all-or-nothing approach.
My argument is that we’re not abandoning fossil fuels, but rather that fossil fuels are abandoning us. We have no degrees of freedom, no agency in the matter. And that void won’t be substituted by anything else but classical biofuels and a small fraction of legacy wind, hydro and geothermal. Running a small population at roughly Edo period Japan technology level.
The carrying capacity of this planet without fossil fuels is less than half a billion people. You do not want a fast exit from fossil fuels.
We’re already running out of middle destillates right now, so there’s your exit willy-nilly.
The world population was at about a billion in 1804 and we do have better technologies today, which should increase the carrying capacity quite a lot. Also a lot of countries have falling populations already and fertility rates are below replacement on all continents but Africa today.
Can you name a few better technologies, which don’t depend on fossil fuels (renewable energy sources do, as do fertilizers, industrial agriculture, transport and others).
I don’t know whether you’re right about inevitable dependencies, but surely reducing fossil fuel use to the essentials would still be a huge and worthwhile improvement? It feels like your argument is needlessly suggesting an all-or-nothing approach.
My argument is that we’re not abandoning fossil fuels, but rather that fossil fuels are abandoning us. We have no degrees of freedom, no agency in the matter. And that void won’t be substituted by anything else but classical biofuels and a small fraction of legacy wind, hydro and geothermal. Running a small population at roughly Edo period Japan technology level.