The scale of our modern energy challenge is immense. If you are not staggered by it, then you have not grasped it.
Do we give up? No. But there are some who haven’t given up because human success was never their goal. Robert Stone puts it better than I can:
Or, if you prefer the philosophical treatment. Well, I’m open to suggestions on how to challenge this sort of thinking. I mean, I understand it, just as I understand the fear of radiation. In some ways it is the same sort of thinking that wants to keep the world’s poor bereft of reliable energy.
This is an awesome design, and the efficency involved is laudible. But then what?
A “return to simpler times”, let alone any kind of neo-Malthusian fate for civilisation is something I must reject outright. The least our children deserve is for us to work as hard as we must to ensure their lives and opportunities are better than those we’ve had provided for us by our own parents. But more than that, no child is intrinsically less deserving than any other.
The Actinide Age 