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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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well if it was a 1:1 replacement with zero growth it will be fine;
The problem is the goal economy is structured around a 10% per year (compounding) growth rate in energy use; which means we have a rather short doubling time. And it only takes 120 doubling before we exceed the total energy of the sun and long before that the Earth would be hotter than the surface of the Sun. (Even if we removed 100% of all green house gases and blocked out the Sun entirely and distributed pure electricity only)
That being said if we build a Dyson Sphere and do some Star lifting to convert it to a white dwarf star https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzuHxL5FD5U
and cut our growth rate significantly, we might be able to have a civilization of growth for about a billion years.
I would imagine the population will stabilize itself and/or we will begin human expansion into space before that becomes an issue, but that is a thing I read about. There is a hard maximum number of people that could live on this planet in modernity. 🤔 I'm not sure how having space solar power now would make that an issue though. The heat issue is something we'll have to think about down the line.
Well yes there is a hard limit, we just don't know what the exact carrying capacity is (there may be multiple different values).
https://bsidneysmith.com/writings/essays/all-the-bunnies-in-the-meadow-die