Think about it - all the most easily extracted fossil fuels, the stuff near the surface, are already exhausted. And, to transition to sustainable energy, you have to bootstrap manufacturing with fossil fuels, since mainstream sustainable energy requires photovoltaic cells and controllers and electronics.
I think that might be pessimistic.
We have fossil-fuel free substitutes for a lot of chemical needs. It’s just that right now, many of them are more expensive or smaller scale than just riding the petroleum dragon.
If the easy option isn’t there, we can still move forward, but it might be slower or require different tradeoffs. For example, plastic might be precious and used judiciously. It might be 500 years from “first hydroelectric dam” to “ubiquitous rooftop solar” instead of 150.
Also our technology is built on layers and layers of incredibly specialized knowledge, much of which is held by a relatively small number of people and only stored digitally.
Also pretty much any manmade object that you use is made with very precise tools and of highly processed materials. Even if you had someone with all the knowledge to make the thing from scratch, and all the raw materials to make it and make the tools used to make it, it could take decades to create from scratch.
Yes. We live in the Anamoly. Never before has humankind had so much energy at their hands and likely it will never again. Unless we make the transition for renewable energy. It’s looking a bit more positiv in that regard, but we will see if it’s enoth to avoid a collapse or simplification event.
We’re gonna go back to slaughtering whales
I hope there are whales to slaughter
