<rant>These little ramblings on the future of corporations in 2100 is no better than discussions around the number of angels atop a pin head. All of these economic references without any ground in the reality of a finite world annoy me to no end. It's time both for academics and bloggers together to get in touch with reality : the planet is finite. Resources are limited. We'll be running out of them fast. All common -- and many less common, like in this article -- economic theories written by people ignoring the second law of thermodynamics (or as a physicist said "[these economists] can't even change a tyre") are bunk. Yes, I think that only hard-core environmentalists are looking in the right direction, and we're a bunch of fools. The Titanic is sinking but the orchestra's still playing. </rant>
tl;dr: I'm extremely pessimistic about the future. This sort of happy, dreamy nonsense gets on my nerves.
Your statements are just completely misguided. We're finding more and more sources of energy everyday. Our sources for energy isn't decreasing; it's increasing because techology allows us to extract more oil, more natural gas, more coal, and more uranium, as well as discovering newer and more efficient means to extract energy. We're also innovating on renewables; we're rapidly finding newer methods to get more energy out of wind and sun for example. Remember, we hadn't exploited natural gas for energy use until recently; technological innovations are helping us continually extract more and more energy out of that resource.
Before finding any uses for fossil fuels, we survived off of hydropower, an inifinite supply of energy. Predicting a doom and gloom because we'll run out of fossil fuels makes you forget that humans have survived for thousands and thousands of centuries without fossil fuels.
Further, stating that we'll run out of resources ignores the laws of supply and demand: if resources start to dry up, prices will increase, prompting people to find alternative sources for energy. Guess where the next growth industry will be, and where people will spend their money.
With economic growth, comes new and better ways of extracting energy (see natural gas and nuclear power, recent phenomenons). Humans are innovative, and we'll find even newer sources of energy in the future like we have been doing since the dawn of time.
> We're finding more and more sources of energy everyday.
Excuse me, this flies in the face of everything I know of. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
No source of energy even remotely comparable to fossil fuels in power density and convenience is in sight. Unless you discovered a way to build a fusion reactor?
> Predicting a doom and gloom because we'll run out of fossil fuels makes you forget that humans have survived for thousands and thousands of centuries without fossil fuels.
Logical fallacy. Human beings will still exist in the future. What's in question is advanced civilisation. Read about how Rome looked like when Carolus Magnus came there, 350 years after its fall.
> Further, stating that we'll run out of resources ignores the laws of supply and demand: if resources start to dry up, prices will increase, prompting people to find alternative sources for energy.
Typical armchair economist bullshit; this really makes me angry nowadays. People will find alternative resources given that some exist.
> With economic growth, comes new and better ways of extracting energy ...
Hello, second law of thermodynamics calling. Exponential continuous growth is impossible. You know, like "it will cease someday or another, whether you like it or not".
I see your claim of peak oil and raise you one statue of David. Human creativity is one counter to the second law of thermodynamics.
Peak oil/resource depletion feels very much like global warming to me in that the main advocates of it make the data fit their theories instead of vice-versa. For example, back in '04, it was seriously argued that the peak oil crisis would cause me to now be living in a tipi in the post-oil dystopia. Instead, my living standard has only increased since '04.
Now, Ugo is arguing that even if we continue to acquire new sources of natural resources[1], that the resulting pollution will destroy civilization. Bollocks I say! Furthermore, I question why he and his ilk are so invested in the collapse of Western civilization.
> Peak oil/resource depletion feels very much like global warming to me in that the main advocates of it make the data fit their theories instead of vice-versa.
OK, please show me the data contradicting peak oil (even the IEA recognizes it now), or climate change. And I'm the one that "wants to believe". Heck, you people drive me mad.
Your point is actually part of the article - the finiteness of physical, social, and mental resources constrained and will constrain possible paths and futures.
While the author mostly hints at what could be next, his closing focus on human perspective is credible: finite resources of energy and diminishing returns on investment (whether of time, capital, productivity, etc.) will entail the weakening of the corporate mode of life, and will entail major re-evaluations of infinite-growth assumptions.
Yes, I probably was unjust but hey, that was a rant. I must be agreeing more with the general analysis than would appear from the rant; it's more the reference book I was after, and maybe the chosen perspective.
It's been over 40 years since we went to the moon. How close are we to mining asteroids for rare earth metals and meeting our energy needs from non-terrestrial sources?
I read the article but not the comments, so perhaps I'm repeating something there...
> a closed-circuit life support system capable of keeping a human occupant alive indefinitely, for many years at a stretch, with zero failures and losses, and capable where necessary of providing medical intervention. Let's throw in a willing astronaut (the fool!) and stick them inside this assembly. It's going to be pretty boring in there, but I think we can conceive of our minimal manned interstellar mission as being about the size and mass of a Mercury capsule
Perhaps the most effective means of interstellar travel is bases within asteroids, not spaceships. Future humans could build habitats inside asteroids, then with a few nudges upset the entire gravitational equilibrium of the asteroid belt, slinging some asteroids out of the solar system. We're probably able to compute the most optimum way of doing this within the next century, and humans are more likely to survive interstellar trips buried inside asteroids than in a spaceship's husk.
> you're not going to get any news back from the other end in less than decades.
> transporting our Mercury-capsule sized expedition to Proxima Centauri in less than a lifetime.
Why not one-way trips? The new civilizations might consider themselves new "countries", unworthy of interference by Earth in their internal affairs.
I should add we have another billion or so years of life left in our Sun, before we really need to leave our solar system: that gives us enough time to learn how to do one-way interstellar trips. I concede that in the meantime, Earth's population is likely to suddenly drop a few times. The projected 9 billion inhabitants in year 2050 seems unstable, though new food/fuel technology may come before then.
As for mining the asteroids, perhaps it'll be done by Earth-based avatars. Certainly the Moon can be mined that way, with its 1 second response time, but Mars would be more of a challenge, requiring machine-human cooperation in the processing.
This opinion is extremely unpopular though because it requires so many lifestyle consumption changes for all of us.
It's like knowing you have a serious illness, but putting off a visit to the doctor's to confirm it, because then you'll have to take steps that'll impact your lifestyle (I.e. quit smoking / drinking / drugs).
No one will change his/her lifestyle unless some extreme conditions apply.
Therefore, almost nobody will change lifestyle. But it doesn't matter, as we all die, and we are replaced by people with a different mindset/lifestyle.
E.g. smokers die of cancer, new generations smoke less.
tl;dr: I'm extremely pessimistic about the future. This sort of happy, dreamy nonsense gets on my nerves.