Scientific American: “What’s the best way to address a politically charged topic such as the future of energy? Remove the politics. “We’re going to skip over the politics,†Robert P. Laughlin, who won a Nobel Prize for physics in 1998, told a rapt audience of young scientists and others at the 60th annual Nobel Laureate Lectures at Lindau. “I’m not interested in now but in the time of your children’s children’s children, six generations into the future and 200 years from now,†when all carbon burning has stopped because it’s been banned or none is left, he said. “Thinking about a problem this way is so simple. Instead of arguing about what to do now, I want to talk about what will happen when there’s no coal.””
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know someone is going to say “But that’s what we have.” “There’s plenty to go ’round.” Blah, blah, blah. Ok, you’re right. We have plenty of fossil fuels, now. It will run out, and if you don’t understand that you’re not facing reality. Sure, we may all be dead when it happens, but it will happen.
Is it just me or is it selfish to not think about the future? I think it’s very selfish. It feels like I’m in the minority.