I fully agree that all these things don't _solve_ anything and it never will, it just delays the inevitable a little bit.
But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
> people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough"
Maybe I am too cynical, but I think the problem with this is that means, in practice:
"OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The quality of life you have today? That's it.
Oh, and all you guys still in poverty [there are still billions of people who use very little energy], you're also going to have to stay there. Sorry."
That will in turn cause civil unrest and even more unhappy people than we have today, which means increased totalitarianism, oppression and violence to quash that to keep societies "stable". For all the ills of consumerism and aspirationism, it _is_ serving as an opium to keep people distracted from the harsh realities of the world.
We'd go back to the Middle Ages, in terms of the rate of improvement of the quality of life. I don't think many people are OK with that.
> But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
I am pretty cynical and skeptical, so that may be tainting my view here for sure. This idea of abundant, nonpolluting energy feels like a perpetual motion machine to me. Energy systems require control to be useful, from storage to transmission to heat dissipation. Energy systems are inherently lossy and though we could one day find a cleaner or even truly clean energy source, that energy still has to be stored, transmitted, and used.
> OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The opposite side of the coin is interesting to consider as well. We will always think things could be better, and maybe we even can make them better. We need to know what "enough" is though, and that would mean that we could get to a point where we have consumed enough resources and we should slow down or stop. "Progress" as a goal always sounds great on the surface, but it has to be directional (we need to know what we're progressing towards) and it must be bounded when goals are reached.
This is really where my cynicism steps in though. I just haven't seen many examples of people who can actually find "enough" and stop there. We tend to get used to what we have now and imagine ways things could get better. If energy were better used today, for example, I strongly believe that everyone could have the basics of food, water, shelter, and community covered and we wouldn't be stuck hating our jobs and always stressed out. We just collectively don't seem to want that.
But it is not completely out of the question we could solve abundant nonpolluting energy. Failure there is not inevitable.
> people collectively will learn what it means to have "enough"
Maybe I am too cynical, but I think the problem with this is that means, in practice:
"OK, everyone. Let's stop accelerated technological progress, and the level of civilization we have today, that's where we're going to stay at from now on, with maybe some smaller bugfixes rolling out once every 50 years or so.
The quality of life you have today? That's it.
Oh, and all you guys still in poverty [there are still billions of people who use very little energy], you're also going to have to stay there. Sorry."
That will in turn cause civil unrest and even more unhappy people than we have today, which means increased totalitarianism, oppression and violence to quash that to keep societies "stable". For all the ills of consumerism and aspirationism, it _is_ serving as an opium to keep people distracted from the harsh realities of the world.
We'd go back to the Middle Ages, in terms of the rate of improvement of the quality of life. I don't think many people are OK with that.