United Nations: Climate action is unstoppable

[NickB79]

12. Cheaper ways to create energy won't get us out of the ecological mess we've created

Because cheaper energy will ultimately lead to more resource extraction from the planet as more people around the world embrace Western-style middle-class lifestyles, with all the material demands that they entail.

Imagine fusion-powered fishing trawlers that can scour the sea for months. Fusion-powered, automated logging machines that can cut lumber day and night, or mining machines that extract ore day and night. Farm equipment that can plow massive fields by themselves, destroying what little fallow land we have left in the name of more yield and more profit.

We can and likely will consume the non-fossil fuel resources of this planet like a swarm of locusts if given virtually unlimited, guilt-free energy resources.

We keep imagining that more economic growth will somehow fix what rampant economic growth over the past few centuries has created in the first place. Yet here we are, consuming resources at an entirely unsustainable rate, with a still-growing population several billion over the global carrying capacity and not expected to peak for another 40-50 years.

Climate change is but one of many converging ecological crises we have created.