Scientists skeptical of Lockheed Martin's truck-sized FUSION reactor breakthrough boast

[GliderGuider]

5. Fusion Unlimited

Some people won't like this comment, but I think that succeeding at this is the worst thing that could happen to humanity, short of never running out of fossil fuels. Lots and lots of cheap energy was what got us into this Homo colossus pickle in the first place. What makes anyone think that accessing even more energy will get us out? Even if it is carbon-free? Climate change isn't the only civilization tipping point we face, after all.

What we face is not a technological problem. What we have is a social problem. Humans in groups demonstrate an absolute inability to live within limits, to live in equilibrium with our surroundings. If we did have such an ability, all those societies that Jared Diamond chronicled in "Collapse" wouldn't have collapsed, and our species would have come to an accommodation with our environment long ago, no matter what our level of technology or energy availability was.

The point of technology is to maximize the useful energy we can extract from an energy flow. Sometimes a technology can even create new energy flows where there were none before. More advanced technology does it better, making more energy available for human uses. Think of the harnessing of fire, the burning of fossil fuels, the splitting of the atom, wind turbines and solar panels - and now the vague possibility of limitless fusion power.

In the words of Eric Sevareid, "The chief cause of problems is solutions." From an ecological point of view, more energy is the problem, not the solution.