I read a sci fi story once where humans went on and on and on with all the free lunches with everything under the sun, including the sun itself, used for fuel.
FINALLY, at the very end, when ALL, that is, ALL sources for fuel and power were 100% exhausted. Humanity was at its very end of existence.
Then,
was heard:
LET THERE BE LIGHT.
Great sci fi, innit? :o)
Do I smell a free lunch?
I didn’t think it existed.
............
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything gets paid for. You don’t want to be mixing up theology and physics.
What you do smell is new money.
The USA has essentially been bleeding money since the 1970’s. US Oil production peaked in 1970 and in 1973 the first arab oil embargo came that jacked up the price of oil. The USA was designed for cheap energy. Expensive foreign energy has essentially sapped 500 billion annually from the US economy for 30 years.
It will take another 30 years for the USA to fully recapitalize. But yeah we’re in the very first years of that process. Bottom line. What this means is ignore the gold bugs, the doom and gloomers, and the end of the worlders. That stuff may still happen but not this time and not for reasons of a poor economy.
On top of the wild increase in USA oil production somewhere out there in the next decade or two— 4th generation nuclear reactors will cut the cost of energy. This will cause an enormous boost in the wealth of everyone. (The rich of course will get richer. But the middle class will stop shrinking and start expanding again.)
if you want to do nuclear research on your own — google the keywords +lftr +thorium +reactor