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RE: Anarchy, Steemit Wall, and a decentralized solar powered Planet.
As a nuclear engineer interested in extreme safety (like, no moving parts safe) and developing power for the third world, I think you do a massive disservice to not pay attention to how to industrialize from nothing.
It is not sustainable to have to have lithium strip mines in china, for the EVs, gallium and arsenic production by the megaton, and neodymium rare earth mines with nothing to do with megatons of thorium with no market.
If you don't consider the 5 billion people passed by in the industrial revolution, you're going to have a bad time of it... Europe is feeling the effect of that disparity now.
What is your sustainability solution? Long term sustainability can seem unsustainable when viewed through conventional lenses. Silica is the most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Carbon is also quite abundant. A little too abundant in our atmosphere. I didn't mention lithium anywhere in my article. Why didn't you assume I wanted to use graphene superconductors or super heated salt as my energy storage medium? If you are into safe systems with no moving parts what not run everything on thermoelectric generators?
"Sustainability" is a myth. ALL power comes from increasing entropy - in stars at the very least. Thorium is sufficient to power the entire world at US standards for thousands of years. And, since it is in the magma of the core, at a rate which could support several tens of billions at that power level.
And perhaps silica is available in great quantities, but lithium is not, and silver and copper - just the copper alone to take the industrialized world to Wind and Solar would leave every copper mine empty, denuded, not even tailings to reprocess.
Sustainability isn't a myth, its retarded entropy! I'm not sure about how much power it would take to keep the industrialized system going, but I know a system that strives for efficiency instead of increasing growth would be better than this planned obsolescent progress.