No We Can’t

In the raging debate over proposed carbon emission control regulations several fundamental issues seem to strangely be ignored. While the argument centres around cost and need, the more fundamental issue of impossibility never seems to receive any consideration at all. The entire modern economy and sustenance of the population rest on the cheap abundant concentrated energy of fossil fuel. Only two life spans ago the human world was a very different one. Transportation and communication took place at walking speed. Most of the population had to be engaged in food production in order to sustain a minority who could do other things. Lighting and heating were meagre outputs from open flames. Refrigeration did not exist. The only power for almost every physical task was human labour or draft animals.