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Well, to refer back to the original question, I'll have a look at the "best possible" of all fossil-fuel-free worlds. However, I'm taking "best possible" only in the context of energy, leaving out social/economic issues.
Because in those terms, as I see it, nothing would change. The energy would come from renewable sources (well, renewable to the extent that the sun is...), but there'd be enough of it. For electricity this is simple - put up enough wind turbines and everything can go on as before (of course, by "enough wind turbines" I mean a mix of various sources including wind, solar, biomass etc. with enough capacity to cover peak demand reliably, with carefully limited environmental impact, plus some energy conservation measures as well). For transportation it's trickier, but in principle I reckon it's possible.
So let me go into the question of transportation in a little more depth. Ideally, of course, there would be some practical changes here, as in, changes to people's behaviour. Ideally, people would be using cars a lot less, in favour of bikes and public transport. Where they do drive, they'd be driving smaller, more fuel-efficient cars. Also, for medium-distance travel, rail travel would be more important than driving or flying (long-distance is trickier). But even so, we're not going to wean ourselves off our cars any time soon (if ever) - and, really, would we want to?
So... supplying the energy for public transport (both local and long-distance) is simple, assuming we already have a sustainable-energy electric grid in place - most of this is going to be rail-based, so it's just a matter of electrifying all rail systems.
Cars are more difficult. The big buzzword is hydrogen (and fuel cells) but I think that's a bit of a dead end (or, at best, a long shot, not ready for prime-time anytime soon). The hydrogen has to come from somewhere, but assuming that we have sustainable electricity, we can produce hydrogen from that. However, storing hydrogen is incredibly difficult, and more so in a vehicle. You either need incredible pressure, cryogenic temperatures, or both, so there's no small risk of things blowing up. My pet theory is that liquid hydrocarbons are the way to go. In other words, petrol. It just needs to come from sustainable sources instead - ethanol from sugar cane, biodiesel from canola, or equivalent liquids from other crops (or, preferably, waste products). But I've heard from an engineer (and it sounds intuitive to me) that petrol is just about the best imaginable way to power a car or similar vehicle; another point is that the technology of internal combustion engines is very highly developed and if we could find a sustainable way of powering those engines that'd be ideal.
Anyway, enough of that rambling. My point is that as far as I can see it, the technology to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels exists. We'd just have to rigorously implement it, and that ain't happening (not quickly enough). I'm somewhat pessimistic about that part - if we don't do it quickly enough, then, global warming aside, we're in for serious economic trouble, as plenty of others have said in this thread. I'm not quite as pessimistic as some of you - I don't think we'll permanently lose all civilisation and technology, but I think we could be looking at an extended 'dark age' of some sort (which would look more like 1984 than like the middle ages, though). Of course, the whole climate change thing won't help much either. |
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