start to shrink in the coming decade. The amount of the economy dedicated to energy acquisition will become a larger and larger share of our economic pie due to thermodynamic realities. This will likely mean, among other things: much higher prices for energy, many high-energy intensity processes and activities becoming less viable (e.g. public air travel, some heavy industry), and – if we don’t do something to prevent it - wider and deeper poverty as energy services become unaffordable to many. It is a critical point that - in our current situation – any combination of new renewables and depleting fossil fuels is now only available at a cost that is unlikely to allow continued ‘growth’ in the sense we have become accustomed to (without massive and unsustainable amounts of new debt). However, society will still have access to a great deal of energy and will still be able to amply cover for everything that is necessary, but the energy and natural resource inputs required to harness it will increase: in cost, scale, and complexity. We are transitioning from a several hundred year trend of higher energy quality (energy dense, storable, transportable, dispatchable energy) to one of lower energy quality (kinetic, intermittent, low-density) and one of considerably more complexity. Our biophysical reality is that - with or without renewables - our gas stations are being moved farther away. This doesn’t have to be a disaster, but so far, we continue to make decisions as if the gas station were still right around the corner. Net energy is what societies should be focused on, and most people d on’t even know what it is. There is a relatively simple – albeit currently politically unattractive – path to a renewable energy future: We’re going to have to simplify our complex life . TaaL: I recognize that you humans are far more interested in the near future than the intermediate future, but if you continue today’s trend, you eventually reach the point at which you use your entire gas-tank range just driving to the station, at which point, well, what is your economy based on? That would correspond to a Mordor-like society using widespread low- EROEI fossil energy, in which nearly everyone works to produce fossil energy all the time, just to keep Mordor going, perhaps on behalf of a tiny royal elite that lives clean lives elsewhere. It’s not hard to lo ok at your current world order and see how and where that could play out, if it did. Yet at that point, wouldn’t one envy the aboriginal people who never walked the high-tech fossil-using path in the first place? Remember: there is a place for billions of humans... trillions even... living decent lives without poverty: Spread out in the deep future , without overtaxing natural flows of energy and materials. Trying to support a population of 10-
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