Think about it - all the most easily extracted fossil fuels, the stuff near the surface, are already exhausted. And, to transition to sustainable energy, you have to bootstrap manufacturing with fossil fuels, since mainstream sustainable energy requires photovoltaic cells and controllers and electronics.

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    1 year ago

    Also our technology is built on layers and layers of incredibly specialized knowledge, much of which is held by a relatively small number of people and only stored digitally.

    Also pretty much any manmade object that you use is made with very precise tools and of highly processed materials. Even if you had someone with all the knowledge to make the thing from scratch, and all the raw materials to make it and make the tools used to make it, it could take decades to create from scratch.