Renewables

[Rynn]

But the main lesson of TLTG remains true; as the world becomes increasingly wealthy it will use resources at an increasingly rapid rate. This rate of increase is reduced by the fact that population has not grown quite as quickly as predicted, but the path to a wealthy global economy is likely pass through a period in this century when increased demand meets falling resources, and new strategies will be needed to address this.

Better recycling, increasing adoption of renewable energy sources, and (hopefully) fusion power should address the main problems of falling resources; to ensure (for instance) that there is enough fresh water to replenish aquifers and reverse salinification of soils will require a lot of energy, and currently we don't have a good strategy in place to source that energy.

I've read proposals for nuclear powered desalination that could be economically viable in certain nations. In any case in recent years I've come round to the notion that the future isn't going to be the bright, rich, energy fuelled world we thought it would be (that's yesterday's future) but isn't necessarily going to be a dystopic wasteland either. For the most part it seems that fossil fuels will run out, or at least continue to get very expensive (recent market bounce notwithstanding) but hopefully the world is on track for installing a decent level of non-fossil fueled energy infrastructure before then.

Solar PV in the last decade has seen installation rates that are almost exponential. Wind, hydro and other sources are also seeing a rise. In the western world new regulations are in place that enforce higher energy efficiencies on buildings and products (so much so that energy efficiency is something you see advertised on products) and we may be seeing the beginning of electrification of all ground transport.

When I think of the future at the moment I tend to see a world of:

- Expensive but clean energy
- High efficiency environments
- Lots of automation
- A fair amount of lifestyle changes to deal with the first point
- More equality between countries
- Less equality within countries
- More gadgetty gadgets