04/14/05: well.......

Posted by: grundle

The writer's predictions are of the same type as the predictions that Paul Ehrlich made 40 years ago, and his preictions will fail to come true for the same reasons that Ehrlich's prediciotns failed to come true.

The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones. Instead, it ended because newer and better technology came along.

Technology has been advancing for centuries. And the rate of technological advancement has been accelerating. More new technology was invented in the 20th century than in all of the previous centuries put togther. I predict that more new technology will be invented in the 21st century than in all previous centuries put together.

We have the physical ability to build as many new nuclear power plants as we need. The only thing blocking them from being built is political factors. We can extract uranium from the ocean pretty cheaply, and new supplies are always coming into the ocean from lower in the earth's crust. We will never run out of uranium.

Raising the price of water by 1 penny per gallon would completely and permanently eliminate water shortages forever. We can desalinize as much water as we want for less than that 1 penny per gallon, and we can use aquaducts and pipes to transport that water as far inland as we want.

Making cars that run safely on hydrogen is an engineering problem that can be solved, just as it was solved with gasoline. We can get as much hydrogen as we need by using nuclear power to extract the hydrogen from water. The hydrogen is not the fuel. The hydrogen is a medium to store the fuel, like a battery.

Manufactured consumer goods will never be more scarce or more expensive than they are now. These goods will continue to become cheaper and more abundant.

The long term trend in the future will be that per capita energy use will continue to go up, and the standard of living will continue to go up, and people who wish to live in the suburbs will continue to do so.

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