You've misrepresented much of "Limits to Growth," and the dozen or so validating studies performed since. You've claimed that it made hard claims, and was all doom-and-gloom, neglecting the "steady state" run that allowed for settling into a steady state, without catastrophe. You've also heavily relied on the study's opponents, while totally ignoring numerous validating studies.
But you do have a nice reference list for the data you've cherry-picked.
Malthus wasn't wrong; he just didn't anticipate the one-time gift of fossil sunlight that has allowed us to expand into six Earth's-worth of energy resource. The much-lauded "green revolution" in agriculture should more properly be called a "brown revolution," because it is totally based on fossil energy. Half the people alive were literally conjured out of thin air, thanks to the Haber-Bosch process, which depends on natural gas as both a convenient energy source and as a feedstock — this process can't easily be run on electricity, which is where almost all "green" energy winds up. We're currently using 40% more energy than that gathered by all the photosynthesizing plants on Earth. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Like many "limits" critics, you smile and wave your hands, while repeating "technology" over and over. Howard Odum taught us that "technology" is simply a form of embedded energy — as fossil energy goes into permanent, irrevocable decline, so will technology.
I have seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any people in that future.
You're wrong. Throwing in cope like "Malthus wasn't wrong, he was just wrong and that's a good thing and here's why!" doesn't help your case. We are staring down the barrel of several potential energy technology boons, such as various forms of nuclear, and haven't nearly reached max efficiencies with the tech we do have. In regards to agriculture the permaculture fields are demonstrating yields as high as 36.6 metric tonnes per hectare with minimal fertilizer input and they are not even mature fields of study.
The Simon–Ehrlich wager demonstrated that, as the substack author Max says, humans figure things out. It's a direct refutation of Malthus on the grounds that you claim are hand waving. Please follow in Paul Ehrlich's footsteps, put your rhetorical money where your mouth is, and make a specific prediction that we can measure soon to prove your point. Otherwise it's all misanthropic nagging and lecturing.
Limits constructed various scenarios. The steady state scenario has always been presented as highly unlikely. The ones highlighted are always the doom and gloom scenarios. It's not very different from the IPCC scenarios, where the "business as usual" scenario (8.5) -- which is far from that -- is the one used in public communications and in huge numbers of academic papers, long after it became very clear that it was an unrealistic scenario.
It seems disingenuous to stress the one scenario that isn't a disaster when that one doesn't get mentioned and the catastrophic scenarios are the ones promoted. You are an example of Limits doomerism, the view that Limits clearly has pushed for many years. Your recommended blogs are "Doomer's Newsletter", "Last Week in Collapse", and "Our Finite World II." The authors of Limits promoted the doomer scenarios. It was not an academic set of scenarios, each equally plausible.
I agree that the green revolution completely depended on fossil fuels. I don't get your point about us using 40% more energy than gathered by plants. So what? We could be getting all our electricity from nuclear, the fuel for which is not in danger of running out.
I would say that technology is embodied intelligence and learning, not energy. And, yes, technology does solve problems. That is what it's for.
I can't believe you've actually read "Limits to Growth!" The "steady-state" scenario was the one they promoted!
It's only because the "Business As Usual" scenario has consistently tracked the best with reality (notably and independently by Graham Turner, but most recently by Gaya Herrington) that it has received the most attention.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dana Meadows before her untimely death. She actively promoted — and actively *lived*! — the steady-state scenario. She left city life to raise food and chickens and goats. She actually practised what she preached!
Have you read Dennis Meadow's subsequent works? Didn't think so! He, too, actively promoted the steady-state scenario! Since Dana died, he's grown morose, focusing on the flawed reality more than the huge challenges of a steady-state.
How nice of you to package me up into an ill-conceived, pre-conceived notion. But a person is not the sum of the blogs they read. I'd call myself a "reformed technologist" rather than a "doomer," an engineer who then studied and worked in ecology and Permaculture. Could everyone live this way? Perhaps not, but the survivors will.
Unfortunately, technology doesn't care what you think or say. Conventional thinking is that human ingenuity is limitless, but last I checked, the human brain still needs some 2,000 calories each day in order to have *any* "ingenuity," and about twice as much if such ingenuity is to be more than mere scribbles on paper or pixels on a screen.
At least I have the conviction to write under my real name. This probably means I'll be one of the last to go up against the wall before the ammunition runs out. But I'll probably have more in my belly than my executioners do! :-)
I have read Limits, as well as the 2002 update by Gail Herrington published in Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology. I can’t believe that you read much of my essay. Here are relevant excerpts:
“The "steady-state" scenario was the one they promoted!” Of course! That is the one that requires massive coercion to force people into poverty and shorter life spans. The fact that Dennis Meadows promoted the steady state scenario does nothing to dismiss what I wrote. The models produced the desired outcome which is that we need to enact drastic anti-growth policies fitting the “steady state” scenario. You can see the same worldview even where Limits is not mentioned, such as in Michael Moore’s recent documentary, Planet of the Humans. I did actually watch the entire documentary despite my loathing of Moore. I thought the first part, showing the corruption and lies of people like Bill McKibben were very on-point. After that, rather than concluding that we need to use reliable energy sources, Moore argues that we need to drastically cut our standard of living (and prevent poor countries from getting out of poverty).
“In 1970, Forrester was invited to a meeting of the portentously named Club of Rome, an organization devoted to solving what its members describe as the “predicament of mankind”. Their worldview anticipated a global crisis due to the demands being placed on the earth’s carrying capacity and its capacity for disposing of pollutants by the world’s growing population. “
“Given the Club of Rome’s remit, perhaps unsurprisingly the model showed a collapse of the world socioeconomic system sometime during the twenty-first century, if steps were not taken to lessen the demands on the earth’s carrying capacity. In World Dynamics, Forrester wrote: “The Malthusian thesis has been true and at work at all times.” Forrester called for a radical transformation of minds and societies, with wealth to be distributed (by force) equally.”
“World3 explored past and future relations among population, capital, agricultural production, natural resources, and pollution. There was no mention of technological level, institutional factors, economics, policies, or innovation. The model consisted of 100 variables and 80 fixed parameters.” By leaving out these crucial factors, the results were preset to lead to gloomy conclusions. Was this utter ignorance of what a decent model should include or a deliberate omission to create the desired narrative?
“The introductory blurb at the February 1972 conference: ““A world where industrial production has sunk to zero. Where population has suffered a catastrophic decline. Where the air, sea, and land are polluted beyond redemption. Where civilization is a distant memory.” Doesn’t sound like an objective set of scenarios, does it?
“This is the world that the computer forecasts. What is even more alarming, the collapse will not come gradually, but with awesome suddenness, with no way of stopping it.” Limits project leader Meadows, told Time: “All growth projections end in collapse.”
From their 2004 update: In other words, “a few decades into the twenty-first century” (Limits 2004:170) things happen that can be described as a “collapse” or “vast human misery.”
“Four years after the publication of Limits, it was disavowed by its sponsors, the Club of Rome. The Club said that the conclusions of that first report are not correct and that they purposely misled the public in order to “awaken” public concern.” However, the Club apparently not long after returning to supporting the report’s message.
John Maddox, then editor of Nature, called the book “sinister”, and Economic Nobelist Gunnar Myrdal of Sweden dismissed it as “pretentious nonsense”. One MIT professor said “What they’re doing is providing simple-minded answers for simple-minded people who are scared to death. And that’s a dangerous thing… This messianic impulse is what disturbs me.”
“After considering the first two groups of model runs, the authors tell us that their world model: “has led us to one conclusion that appears to be justified under all the assumptions we have tested so far. The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse.” The authors then go on the attack the green revolution for “increasing inequality.””
“To avoid collapse – at least in this century – the model tells us we will have to shrink the population drastically from today’s level. We will have to reduce global life expectancy to just under 70 years. Global income per capita can never be allowed to rise above half the level in 1972 USA. Those who say the critics of Limits misrepresent it because not all runs quickly lead to collapse are being disingenuous. The models assert that we can only avoid collapse through the current century by keeping everyone poor and hungry.”
“Despite that, in the following century collapse will still happen, say the models. We can only trade off time against misery. Or, as the authors delicately put it, “The longer a society prefers to maintain the state of equilibrium, the lower the rates and levels must be.” “
Not from my essay but from Wikipedia: “In 2011 Ugo Bardi in "The Limits to Growth Revisited" argued that "nowhere in the book was it stated that the numbers were supposed to be read as predictions", nonetheless as they were the only tangible numbers referring to actual resources, they were promptly picked as such by both supporters as well as opponents.”
The disaster scenarios certainly COULD come about if we continue the trend of increasing regulation, falling productivity (largely but not only due to regulation), falling population, and damage to our energy supplies.
Great write up on flaws of Malthusian thinking. We are not in danger of running out of food or resources so long as we do not get in our own way. Recent attempts in GOP-controlled states to ban lab grown meat, for instance, comes to mind….just why?
So I read through your misinterpretation of Malthus, and your misrepresentation of The Limits to Growth, and your twisting of other resources to somehow fit your essay, and about 2/3rds in I realised I was wasting my time with it.
So in the hope of maybe putting you on a more honest track, and on the brave (naïve?) assumption that you may possibly be open to changing your mind, I shall add the massive factor of fossil fuels, not only as high-energy-intensity fuels but as food, because modern industrial agriculture turns around 8 to 20 calories of fossil into 1 calorie of food.
And THAT is the reason that in my own lifetime the human population has soared from 2.4 billion to 8.2 billion and still counting - exponential growth on one finite planet and with fossil energy extraction plateaued. What could possibly go wrong.
That is the let-out clause for Malthus, and for the Club of Rome's early efforts to quantify the said Limits. But that does NOT diminish their efforts or the validity of their achievements, nor does it undermine the core truths of Malthus. At worst, it just messes with the timing.
If humans had been able to control their populations in the 1970's to, say, 3 billion people, by now they could all be fed, have access to medical care and education, a share of the fossil fuel gift without messing up the climate.
As it is, as James Lovelock expressed, humans are a virus upon the Earth, causing the 'fever' of climate change, and our best chance of survival as a species and for most other species on Earth to survive as well, would be if two/thirds of humans didn't exist.
I shall leave you and others to find the moral or philosophical path to such an outcome but, given humans abilities to make tools to kill each other, I suspect the competition for the dwindling resources of an overheating planet will do the job, with little necessity for the philosophers to get themselves involved. Including the online ones.
What are the "achievements" of Malthus and the Club of Rome again? I must have missed them.
You think Malthus was right but fossil fuels temporarily (for a couple of centuries and counting) threw off the timing. Malthus's formulation does indeed make sense in primitive societies. We invented the scientific method, ever-advancing technology, and sophisticated institutions that allow us to expand in number while also growing ever wealthier. This is not a confirmation of Malthus. It is a powerful demonstration that his worldview does not apply to our conditions.
The half-century failure of the Club of Rome -- and two-century failure of Malthus -- should give you pause but obviously it does not. For how long will these ideas have to fail before you have a doubt?
You are mistaken in claiming that if we had limited population to 3 billion, we would all be better off. Population growth has made advances in prosperity possible. You really need to read some Julian Simon and later writers.
If resources are finite in some useful sense (not that we are limited to this planet) why is it better to be poorer for longer rather than better off for not so long? I never see anti-growth people address this.
If "humans are a virus upon the Earth" why are you still alive? You can contribute to the solution. Or are you inconsistent like Patricia MacCormack as I showed in my most recent piece?
The climate is doing just fine. It is just slowly getting back to a reasonable level of warmth thereby reducing the numbers of people dying from cold -- which is far larger than the number dying of heat. Fossil fuels also enable people to protect themselves from the environment.
You are delusional. Your answers fly in the face of the evidence and it sounds like you are either a 'True Believer' in a fossil future, or an apologist for the fossil industries, paid or otherwise.
If I could be bothered to debate you. it would require me to refute almost every phrase you have just written as a distortion, and I understand you will not change your mind, so little point - waste of both our time. True Believers won't ever accept any evidence that disagrees with their set-in-stone viewpoint. So let's leave it there.
Thank you Max for addressing this and for laying it all out so clearly. I do have a couple of questions though and they're probably not that easy to answer since none of us can know what's going to happen next.
How do you see some kind of energy transition unfolding over the next twenty to fifty years (allowing for ups and downs)?
Is it possible that certain tech has been held back to make an appearance at the appropriate time and therefore somehow "saves the day?"
Surely the mere mention of such potential solutions would open up plenty of opportunities with investors and hopeful entrepreneurs rising to the challenge and eventually lead to a new paradigm where the old pessimistic ways shrivel up and fall off once and for all.
You've misrepresented much of "Limits to Growth," and the dozen or so validating studies performed since. You've claimed that it made hard claims, and was all doom-and-gloom, neglecting the "steady state" run that allowed for settling into a steady state, without catastrophe. You've also heavily relied on the study's opponents, while totally ignoring numerous validating studies.
But you do have a nice reference list for the data you've cherry-picked.
Malthus wasn't wrong; he just didn't anticipate the one-time gift of fossil sunlight that has allowed us to expand into six Earth's-worth of energy resource. The much-lauded "green revolution" in agriculture should more properly be called a "brown revolution," because it is totally based on fossil energy. Half the people alive were literally conjured out of thin air, thanks to the Haber-Bosch process, which depends on natural gas as both a convenient energy source and as a feedstock — this process can't easily be run on electricity, which is where almost all "green" energy winds up. We're currently using 40% more energy than that gathered by all the photosynthesizing plants on Earth. What could possibly go wrong with that?
Like many "limits" critics, you smile and wave your hands, while repeating "technology" over and over. Howard Odum taught us that "technology" is simply a form of embedded energy — as fossil energy goes into permanent, irrevocable decline, so will technology.
I have seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any people in that future.
You're wrong. Throwing in cope like "Malthus wasn't wrong, he was just wrong and that's a good thing and here's why!" doesn't help your case. We are staring down the barrel of several potential energy technology boons, such as various forms of nuclear, and haven't nearly reached max efficiencies with the tech we do have. In regards to agriculture the permaculture fields are demonstrating yields as high as 36.6 metric tonnes per hectare with minimal fertilizer input and they are not even mature fields of study.
The Simon–Ehrlich wager demonstrated that, as the substack author Max says, humans figure things out. It's a direct refutation of Malthus on the grounds that you claim are hand waving. Please follow in Paul Ehrlich's footsteps, put your rhetorical money where your mouth is, and make a specific prediction that we can measure soon to prove your point. Otherwise it's all misanthropic nagging and lecturing.
Limits constructed various scenarios. The steady state scenario has always been presented as highly unlikely. The ones highlighted are always the doom and gloom scenarios. It's not very different from the IPCC scenarios, where the "business as usual" scenario (8.5) -- which is far from that -- is the one used in public communications and in huge numbers of academic papers, long after it became very clear that it was an unrealistic scenario.
It seems disingenuous to stress the one scenario that isn't a disaster when that one doesn't get mentioned and the catastrophic scenarios are the ones promoted. You are an example of Limits doomerism, the view that Limits clearly has pushed for many years. Your recommended blogs are "Doomer's Newsletter", "Last Week in Collapse", and "Our Finite World II." The authors of Limits promoted the doomer scenarios. It was not an academic set of scenarios, each equally plausible.
I agree that the green revolution completely depended on fossil fuels. I don't get your point about us using 40% more energy than gathered by plants. So what? We could be getting all our electricity from nuclear, the fuel for which is not in danger of running out.
I would say that technology is embodied intelligence and learning, not energy. And, yes, technology does solve problems. That is what it's for.
I can't believe you've actually read "Limits to Growth!" The "steady-state" scenario was the one they promoted!
It's only because the "Business As Usual" scenario has consistently tracked the best with reality (notably and independently by Graham Turner, but most recently by Gaya Herrington) that it has received the most attention.
I had the pleasure of meeting Dana Meadows before her untimely death. She actively promoted — and actively *lived*! — the steady-state scenario. She left city life to raise food and chickens and goats. She actually practised what she preached!
Have you read Dennis Meadow's subsequent works? Didn't think so! He, too, actively promoted the steady-state scenario! Since Dana died, he's grown morose, focusing on the flawed reality more than the huge challenges of a steady-state.
How nice of you to package me up into an ill-conceived, pre-conceived notion. But a person is not the sum of the blogs they read. I'd call myself a "reformed technologist" rather than a "doomer," an engineer who then studied and worked in ecology and Permaculture. Could everyone live this way? Perhaps not, but the survivors will.
Unfortunately, technology doesn't care what you think or say. Conventional thinking is that human ingenuity is limitless, but last I checked, the human brain still needs some 2,000 calories each day in order to have *any* "ingenuity," and about twice as much if such ingenuity is to be more than mere scribbles on paper or pixels on a screen.
At least I have the conviction to write under my real name. This probably means I'll be one of the last to go up against the wall before the ammunition runs out. But I'll probably have more in my belly than my executioners do! :-)
I have read Limits, as well as the 2002 update by Gail Herrington published in Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology. I can’t believe that you read much of my essay. Here are relevant excerpts:
“The "steady-state" scenario was the one they promoted!” Of course! That is the one that requires massive coercion to force people into poverty and shorter life spans. The fact that Dennis Meadows promoted the steady state scenario does nothing to dismiss what I wrote. The models produced the desired outcome which is that we need to enact drastic anti-growth policies fitting the “steady state” scenario. You can see the same worldview even where Limits is not mentioned, such as in Michael Moore’s recent documentary, Planet of the Humans. I did actually watch the entire documentary despite my loathing of Moore. I thought the first part, showing the corruption and lies of people like Bill McKibben were very on-point. After that, rather than concluding that we need to use reliable energy sources, Moore argues that we need to drastically cut our standard of living (and prevent poor countries from getting out of poverty).
“In 1970, Forrester was invited to a meeting of the portentously named Club of Rome, an organization devoted to solving what its members describe as the “predicament of mankind”. Their worldview anticipated a global crisis due to the demands being placed on the earth’s carrying capacity and its capacity for disposing of pollutants by the world’s growing population. “
“Given the Club of Rome’s remit, perhaps unsurprisingly the model showed a collapse of the world socioeconomic system sometime during the twenty-first century, if steps were not taken to lessen the demands on the earth’s carrying capacity. In World Dynamics, Forrester wrote: “The Malthusian thesis has been true and at work at all times.” Forrester called for a radical transformation of minds and societies, with wealth to be distributed (by force) equally.”
“World3 explored past and future relations among population, capital, agricultural production, natural resources, and pollution. There was no mention of technological level, institutional factors, economics, policies, or innovation. The model consisted of 100 variables and 80 fixed parameters.” By leaving out these crucial factors, the results were preset to lead to gloomy conclusions. Was this utter ignorance of what a decent model should include or a deliberate omission to create the desired narrative?
“The introductory blurb at the February 1972 conference: ““A world where industrial production has sunk to zero. Where population has suffered a catastrophic decline. Where the air, sea, and land are polluted beyond redemption. Where civilization is a distant memory.” Doesn’t sound like an objective set of scenarios, does it?
“This is the world that the computer forecasts. What is even more alarming, the collapse will not come gradually, but with awesome suddenness, with no way of stopping it.” Limits project leader Meadows, told Time: “All growth projections end in collapse.”
From their 2004 update: In other words, “a few decades into the twenty-first century” (Limits 2004:170) things happen that can be described as a “collapse” or “vast human misery.”
“Four years after the publication of Limits, it was disavowed by its sponsors, the Club of Rome. The Club said that the conclusions of that first report are not correct and that they purposely misled the public in order to “awaken” public concern.” However, the Club apparently not long after returning to supporting the report’s message.
John Maddox, then editor of Nature, called the book “sinister”, and Economic Nobelist Gunnar Myrdal of Sweden dismissed it as “pretentious nonsense”. One MIT professor said “What they’re doing is providing simple-minded answers for simple-minded people who are scared to death. And that’s a dangerous thing… This messianic impulse is what disturbs me.”
“After considering the first two groups of model runs, the authors tell us that their world model: “has led us to one conclusion that appears to be justified under all the assumptions we have tested so far. The basic behavior mode of the world system is exponential growth of population and capital, followed by collapse.” The authors then go on the attack the green revolution for “increasing inequality.””
“To avoid collapse – at least in this century – the model tells us we will have to shrink the population drastically from today’s level. We will have to reduce global life expectancy to just under 70 years. Global income per capita can never be allowed to rise above half the level in 1972 USA. Those who say the critics of Limits misrepresent it because not all runs quickly lead to collapse are being disingenuous. The models assert that we can only avoid collapse through the current century by keeping everyone poor and hungry.”
“Despite that, in the following century collapse will still happen, say the models. We can only trade off time against misery. Or, as the authors delicately put it, “The longer a society prefers to maintain the state of equilibrium, the lower the rates and levels must be.” “
Not from my essay but from Wikipedia: “In 2011 Ugo Bardi in "The Limits to Growth Revisited" argued that "nowhere in the book was it stated that the numbers were supposed to be read as predictions", nonetheless as they were the only tangible numbers referring to actual resources, they were promptly picked as such by both supporters as well as opponents.”
The disaster scenarios certainly COULD come about if we continue the trend of increasing regulation, falling productivity (largely but not only due to regulation), falling population, and damage to our energy supplies.
Great write up on flaws of Malthusian thinking. We are not in danger of running out of food or resources so long as we do not get in our own way. Recent attempts in GOP-controlled states to ban lab grown meat, for instance, comes to mind….just why?
So I read through your misinterpretation of Malthus, and your misrepresentation of The Limits to Growth, and your twisting of other resources to somehow fit your essay, and about 2/3rds in I realised I was wasting my time with it.
So in the hope of maybe putting you on a more honest track, and on the brave (naïve?) assumption that you may possibly be open to changing your mind, I shall add the massive factor of fossil fuels, not only as high-energy-intensity fuels but as food, because modern industrial agriculture turns around 8 to 20 calories of fossil into 1 calorie of food.
And THAT is the reason that in my own lifetime the human population has soared from 2.4 billion to 8.2 billion and still counting - exponential growth on one finite planet and with fossil energy extraction plateaued. What could possibly go wrong.
That is the let-out clause for Malthus, and for the Club of Rome's early efforts to quantify the said Limits. But that does NOT diminish their efforts or the validity of their achievements, nor does it undermine the core truths of Malthus. At worst, it just messes with the timing.
If humans had been able to control their populations in the 1970's to, say, 3 billion people, by now they could all be fed, have access to medical care and education, a share of the fossil fuel gift without messing up the climate.
As it is, as James Lovelock expressed, humans are a virus upon the Earth, causing the 'fever' of climate change, and our best chance of survival as a species and for most other species on Earth to survive as well, would be if two/thirds of humans didn't exist.
I shall leave you and others to find the moral or philosophical path to such an outcome but, given humans abilities to make tools to kill each other, I suspect the competition for the dwindling resources of an overheating planet will do the job, with little necessity for the philosophers to get themselves involved. Including the online ones.
What are the "achievements" of Malthus and the Club of Rome again? I must have missed them.
You think Malthus was right but fossil fuels temporarily (for a couple of centuries and counting) threw off the timing. Malthus's formulation does indeed make sense in primitive societies. We invented the scientific method, ever-advancing technology, and sophisticated institutions that allow us to expand in number while also growing ever wealthier. This is not a confirmation of Malthus. It is a powerful demonstration that his worldview does not apply to our conditions.
The half-century failure of the Club of Rome -- and two-century failure of Malthus -- should give you pause but obviously it does not. For how long will these ideas have to fail before you have a doubt?
You are mistaken in claiming that if we had limited population to 3 billion, we would all be better off. Population growth has made advances in prosperity possible. You really need to read some Julian Simon and later writers.
If resources are finite in some useful sense (not that we are limited to this planet) why is it better to be poorer for longer rather than better off for not so long? I never see anti-growth people address this.
If "humans are a virus upon the Earth" why are you still alive? You can contribute to the solution. Or are you inconsistent like Patricia MacCormack as I showed in my most recent piece?
The climate is doing just fine. It is just slowly getting back to a reasonable level of warmth thereby reducing the numbers of people dying from cold -- which is far larger than the number dying of heat. Fossil fuels also enable people to protect themselves from the environment.
You are delusional. Your answers fly in the face of the evidence and it sounds like you are either a 'True Believer' in a fossil future, or an apologist for the fossil industries, paid or otherwise.
If I could be bothered to debate you. it would require me to refute almost every phrase you have just written as a distortion, and I understand you will not change your mind, so little point - waste of both our time. True Believers won't ever accept any evidence that disagrees with their set-in-stone viewpoint. So let's leave it there.
Enjoy your views!
Thank you Max for addressing this and for laying it all out so clearly. I do have a couple of questions though and they're probably not that easy to answer since none of us can know what's going to happen next.
How do you see some kind of energy transition unfolding over the next twenty to fifty years (allowing for ups and downs)?
Is it possible that certain tech has been held back to make an appearance at the appropriate time and therefore somehow "saves the day?"
Surely the mere mention of such potential solutions would open up plenty of opportunities with investors and hopeful entrepreneurs rising to the challenge and eventually lead to a new paradigm where the old pessimistic ways shrivel up and fall off once and for all.