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If they're bridges to nowhere, they've at least kept us warm now. Ultimate costs which leave us further behind? Has never happened on more than a regional level, very rarely on more than a local one. The world would not be better off without coal power, hydro power, or nuclear power despite the various problems associated with all of them. On the other hand, anti-energy is not just a bridge to nowhere, it's just stopping. You're not going to advance anything once you're shivering in the dark, with no shipping, no air travel, on a calorie-restricted diet and the way out of this is well-known (burn fuel) but the environmentalist elite won't let you use it.
"Sure this bridge stops halfway across the canyon, but at least it has kept me moving forward for now!" is not actually a compelling argument against my point.
This has never been my contention, even to the point that I explicitly supported hydro power! But the problem with fossil fuels specifically is that they aren't renewable on any scale or timeline that matters to people, and as they decline our total energy budget will go down as well. I'm not suggesting that we stop using them at all, and anyone who did stop would be immediately outcompeted by people who did. I think a better way to get across my view here would be a financial metaphor.
Say you won the lottery one day - you got a massive lump sum with tons of money. You quit your job and stop making money the way you used to, and just live off this giant pile of savings, a giant pile which is not going to be renewed. My contention is that you should save a bunch of this money for the future - maybe there's a really great investment opportunity coming in the future that requires a substantial amount of capital. My position is that you absolutely should not waste this sudden windfall in a spree of profligate spending under the assumption that you can just win the lottery again. When the "economic elite" tells you that you should save a bunch of money for the future and retool your lifestyle so that you're not spending so much money that you'll run out well before you die of old age, are they just unaware that your second lottery win is right around the corner?
To abandon the metaphor, how confident are you that the hypothetical energy-generating technologies of the future aren't going to require a significant investment of energy to get them fully integrated into society in a usable way? Think about the immense costs associated with completely ripping out the petroleum-based infrastructure in the US and replacing it with something more sustainable. That's a massive economic undertaking and right now the US government cannot even maintain basic infrastructure in broad swathes of the country, let alone go on massive civic improvement projects. Hell, even the late Romans were capable of building border walls!
The analogy has been pushed past its useful point. If various energy technologies do not in fact lead to a glorious carbon-free renewable future, they are still useful in they keep us warm and -- assuming arguendo we do need to reach this glorious carbon-free renewable future -- able to look for other ways to get there.
I'm sure they will requires an investment of energy. But if they're a good investment and industrial society is still functioning, it will be available. And that's a lot more likely if we don't impose austerity plans to "save" the shale in the ground.
Spare me the rhetorical talking points. The US not only can but does maintain basic infrastructure (and more than basic) in the vast majority of the country. There are exceptions for various political and economic reasons, but none would somehow prevent the introduction of a new method of power generation, nor would any amount of "saving" make those exceptions better.
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