Thank you for this thought-provoking post! Maybe ‘WTF happened in 1971’ should be renamed to ‘WTF happened in 1973’? Energy scarcity being at the root of the long term trends in productivity and prosperity seems like a more plausible explanation than the Nixon shock.
Long term abundance is a great future to look forward to. What has me more concerned is the inertia of the climate system (committed warming, feedbacks) and the turbulence it’s going to cause in the next decades. It seems like a race to deploy enough solar to allow people to adapt to extreme weather (air conditioners for wet bulb heat waves, fresh water for droughts etc.).
Thank you for this thought-provoking post! Maybe ‘WTF happened in 1971’ should be renamed to ‘WTF happened in 1973’? Energy scarcity being at the root of the long term trends in productivity and prosperity seems like a more plausible explanation than the Nixon shock.
Long term abundance is a great future to look forward to. What has me more concerned is the inertia of the climate system (committed warming, feedbacks) and the turbulence it’s going to cause in the next decades. It seems like a race to deploy enough solar to allow people to adapt to extreme weather (air conditioners for wet bulb heat waves, fresh water for droughts etc.).