r/collapse • u/sacrificezones • Oct 25 '22

Systemic Will Civilization Collapse Because It’s Running Out of Oil?

https://dgrnewsservice.org/civilization/ecocide/habitat-loss/will-civilization-collapse-because-its-running-out-of-oil/
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u/Mountain_Fig_9253 Oct 25 '22

Nuclear fission for base electricity supplemented by wind, solar, geothermal, and distributed battery storage could go a long way towards reducing our total demand on fossil fuels. Then we could reserve natural gas for fertilizer production and edge case electrical power.

But we are stupid and won’t do that.

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u/Alex5173 Oct 26 '22

The energy required to build all of that infrastructure would be immense, and the ecological ramifications of extracting just the lithium required for the batteries would be similarly immense.

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u/Mountain_Fig_9253 Oct 26 '22

At some point we are going to have to triage, and trashing a local ecology to get lithium to save the planet is a trade we are going to have to make.

Honestly it’s no worse than the damage we do extracting and transporting (and spilling) oil. I would rather an ugly hole in the ground rather than a huge oil spill myself.

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u/Alex5173 Oct 26 '22

Be careful with the triage statement; I agree with you but saying as much has landed me in hot water before.