Why Technology Can’t Save Us

When we run out of fossil fuels machines grind to a halt

I asked Grok to imagine a man with a modern bicycle on a road in 1700s England. Did any road, in pre-coal burning England look like that?

Imagine you need to escape 2025. Image there is a time machine that can take you back to 1700, where you live out your life. Next, imagine what technology you would fit into this van-sized time-machine.

No use bringing electronics; no electricity. No use bringing gas-powered transportation; no gasoline. No use loading up with industrial equipment; no diesel.

Without fossil fuels, all the technology that makes for your modern life becomes inanimate sculpture, alien artifacts. Excuse the poetry.

Without fossil-fuels (including solar/wind built by it) all our technology is completely and utterly useless.

(And no, in 1700 there’s no equipment that will refine oil to something useable).

Instead, fill up your time machine with antibiotics, aspirin, ball bearings, water-purification tablets, etc. No technology would make you King, but you’d live better.

You could pack solar panels, batteries, and machinery that runs off electricity. When the batteries die in 15 years what then? Further, how much real work could you do? Waiting for the batteries to charge, working only a few hours. Could you pave the road Grok imagined above in 1700?

Let’s say you brought technical books, explaining how to create our modern world. How long do you believe it would take for the people around you to build that world around the fossil fuels they must first mine? More important, how long would they keep you around?

We already know part of the the answer. Today Nigeria mines huge oil deposits yet no one moves there. Why?

The world pre-1700 lived a different life than us, constrained by the vicissitudes of the weather and energy from the sun. It’s easy to believe humans were only limited by a lack of technology. And they were, but...

It isn’t technology alone that creates a modern life. All technology must, ABSOLUTELY MUST have a power-source.

If aliens destroyed all technology on Earth we could one day rebuild it and burn the energy from fossil fuels.

If alien ships landed, sucked up all the fossil fuels and left, no technology can recreate coal and oil.

For the sake of argument you believe this. When it’s gone it’s gone. What next?

Let’s now image we go to a restaurant that says it’s running out of food but if everyone takes smaller portions it will try to feed everyone (though no proof that it will). Do you

A) stay; or B) look for a restaurant that isn’t running out of food?

If you picked ‘B’ you understand why there are so many people trying to migrate and why the West has become anti-immigration.

I estimate that there are 1 in 100 humans who try to figure out how everything works. We try to get everyone to recognize the risk of a future, where no technology fixes our declining supply of fossil fuels.

Many of us argue that our population will go back to what the Earth supported before the exploitation of fossil fuels — under 1 billion. (Some say to complete extinction).

I believe human nature will never allow ‘A’ to work. There is no energy transition to renewables. (That’s what the winners — energy hoarders — tell themselves as immigrants are deported).

It’s entirely possible that many people will sail through the next few centuries enjoying a less-is-more lifestyle!

Whether a nation is a dictatorship or a democracy, doesn’t matter much in the end.

You’re either part of those controlling the fossil fuels or you’re not. Sure, I need to rant about this or that so prefer a democracy. Yet would my progeny miss what they never experienced?

If the U.S. is one day run by an emperor, will people leave to live in a country with democracy, but no oil? Or will they revolt? Die to keep democratic institutions alive?

That is a question asked today.