TheDemonBuer

Like, all you really need to build a settlement is water, electricity and a source of carbon.

That’s not all you need. You also need breathable air and surface pressure that isn’t going to make your eyes pop out of your skull. You need protection from too high levels of radiation.

You’re not living on the surface of Mars. That environment is not survivable. If you’re going to Mars, you’re living underground or in enclosed habitats. You can do that here. Go get a little bit of land here on Earth and build a self sustaining enclosed habitat and live in it. It would be a lot easier and cheaper.

Yeah, space. That’s always the solution. But if expanding into less and less hospitable environments was the next frontier of continued economic growth, why aren’t investors scrambling to build out Antarctica or the bottom of the ocean?

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding at the heart of many countries’ energy policies. Many countries believe that continued economic growth will require an increasing amount of energy. That is absolutely true. More growth will require more energy. However, the misunderstanding is the almost subconscious belief that energy = oil and gas. It’s as if many world leaders believe that there are no energy sources available to humanity outside of some relatively rare fossil hydrocarbon deposits. To many, oil and gas is energy and energy is oil and gas. It makes sense why people who think this way believe the choice the world faces is between continued growth or reducing fossil use, as if we must choose one or the other. The fact is, it is possible to grow while reducing fossil fuel use. Between renewables and nuclear power, we can produce enough energy to power a growing global economy.

That being said, infinite growth does require infinite energy. If the global economy continues to grow, at some point we will need all the fossil energy resources, as well as all renewable energy and all the nuclear energy. But we’ll boil our atmosphere just from latent heat before we can use all the energy. At some point, wealthy countries are going to have to decide when enough is enough. We simply cannot grow forever on a finite planet. It’s not physically possible. But in the meantime, developing countries especially can and should continue to grow, and they absolutely can do that without increasing global fossil fuel demand. But that’s largely up to the wealthy countries.