|
There is a difference. A classic example would be coal, back in the 1970s, it was predicted that we had 500 years left of coal to produce electricity. Today, its estimated we have maybe 50 years, if that. Why the disparity? Because the first study, from the '70s, did not account for increase in electricity demand, in addition to more accurate accounting of how much coal is actually in the ground.
Do you remember the rolling blackouts in California a few years ago? That was caused because a few energy companies decided to scam customers and take advantage of the situation there, they created an artificial, and temporary, energy shortage. However, if you removed the greed from the equation, and replaced it with fuel, that's the future, the near future, for some parts of the nation, and it will expand as well.
The big problem is this, even if Fusion, or even more speculative energy production technologies, like Zero-point energy(most likely a fantasy), were to be discovered or found to be working, you would have to be able to build enough plants to take up the slack when supply is outstripped by demand. Considering we are hitting a wall NOW or in the very near future, that seems unlikely.
As far as people predicting the end of economic growth for centuries, well, economic growth has stopped, many times, and has actually regressed, many times. In the past it was highly localized, when empires collapsed, or people died off, famines etc. The fact is that today we live in a globalized world, with an economy based on only fossil fuels. Those fuels are quickly hitting peak production, and will not keep up with demand, that means a perpetual recession until such time that technologies such as fusion MAY be able to take up some of the slack.
We aren't talking an apocalypse here, but more like a slow decline. First it would be an inconvenience, for example rolling blackouts, some days with electricity, some days without, lines at gas stations, etc. Depending on the society in question, such a crisis could be handled extraordinarily well, or governments can make it worse.
We have two different fossil fuels that concern us, Coal and Oil, Coal actually is the easier one to deal with, first it will not peak for a while now, somewhere around 50 years as I said, and is mostly used for electrical generation in power plants. It can be replaced by damned near anything, from solar panels, to wind generation, to geothermic, fission plants, or fusion plants(in the future), etc. This means we have options and time to implement them.
Oil is trickier, simply but, its the most dense form of energy we know about, and its portable, hence its primary usage as a means to fuel transportation, mostly cars and airplanes. There is no alternative produced today that can replace it, supplement it, yes, such as ethanol, batteries, etc. but not outright replace it, not at current world demands, and certainly not at future increased demands. We don't have enough arable land to create enough ethanol to match the 83 million barrels of oil that we consume per day NOW, much less the projection of 100+ million barrels we would supposedly consume in less than a decade. It doesn't really matter where the ethanol comes from, we simply don't have the land, and unless we want to turn every coastline green with algae, that won't replace the oil either.
Electric vehicles aren't really a means to combat this either, they are a pollution control measure, and use batteries or fuel cells, energy carriers, not producers. They are expensive, and not a very efficient means of transport, just like gasoline or diesel automobiles aren't efficient. If we were to replace every automobile and truck on the road in the United States with an electric or fuel cell vehicle, we would need to produce a huge amount of additional electricity, probably twice as much as we do now, just to keep up. In short, we don't have that ability, not now, and not in the near future.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot sustain our current lifestyles, at current growth rates, on Earth. We need to make sacrifices on some level, both individually and as a society to make sure we create a society that's sustainable. This would mean no more poorly insulated McMansions, nor suburbs or exurbs, people would have to live closer to not only each other, but their places of commerce and business. They would have to sacrifice their cars, which are themselves extremely inefficient. No more air travel, jet engines are gas guzzlers to begin with, and will be priced out of the market soon enough as it is.
Primary means of transportation would either be our feet, the bicycle, or public transportation. High speed rail would probably be the most likely alternative for long distance travel, etc. We would need to live much more efficiently than we do now. Whether this is good or bad depends on your point of view, but as I said, sacrifices would have to be made.
|