I don’t see the inherent argument that technology as a whole is unsustainable. When we’re constantly evolving what resources are needed for technology. Yes current tech is unsustainable, but so were steam engines.
In practice current and mid-term future technology has well known limits in terms of geology and physics. Future technology can be different (molecular nanotechnology), but we need a traversable path to there that needs sustained high technology. I find it difficult to imagine such a path.
Also batteries, lithium is expensive so a lot of companies are trying to come up with cheaper, but also more sustainable alternatives. And they already have with lithium iron phosphate that requires less lithium. And as prices for a substance rise, so will the desire for alternatives and recycling.
We already know we can have sodium batteries but the economics of TWh and PWh storage plus supporting infrastructure, all created and indefinetely sustained mostly by photovoltaics, including photovoltaics itself, including high temperature industrial processes our industry hinges upon are not supported by favorable numbers.
Eventually yes, but I personally think that recycling solar panels and so on could slow collapse much more than the author suggests.
but so were steam engines.
Fun fact: we still use steam engines in quite a lot of things, actually. Not so much with wood and coil furnaces to power boilers in locomotives, but just about every power plant uses a steam engine.
Yep, even nuclear reactors use some form of steam engine to generate electricity out of the heat they produce. It’s remarkably effective.
But of note to OP is that steam engines aren’t necessarily unsustainable. The heat to produce motion that generates electrical current can be generated by renewable means. Molten salt solar basically does that, for example, and it fits most definitions of “sustainable”.
What types of electric generation that aren’t heat related? I can think of wind and solar, and hydro? But nuclear and fossil fuels are steam, aren’t they?
