this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
389 points (97.1% liked)

Map Enthusiasts

6161 readers
8 users here now

For the map enthused!

Rules:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Regarding the problem of running out of oil, I look at it a bit like, "we are a plant (biological plant)".

The plant starts in a seed, which provides it with nutrients (energy) as some kind of starting bonus. It can use these nutrients to develop itself and live, but it will recognize that at some point it will run out of calories and die. So it has to do something about it. What it does, is to develop leaves. These leaves collect the sunlight and this way, the plant has a constant and continuous source of energy/calories. So it can keep on living.

Society has a very similar problem. We have oil, but it is limited. We can use it to develop, but eventually we're gonna run out of it. So we have to do something about it. Just like a plant, we develop solar panels to collect the sunlight, so we have a continuous income of energy. This way we can live waaay beyond the time of our starting bonus.