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There's a lot of HN and YC-aligned people who don't believe this, despite the empirical evidence of the last few decades.

To take the stupidest version of the argument (not going to sugarcoat it, I think it was embarrassingly stupid) there was Marc Andreesen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto where he called for a 1000x increase in energy production from nuclear fission and fusion. I quote directly:

"We believe energy should be in an upward spiral. Energy is the foundational engine of our civilization. The more energy we have, the more people we can have, and the better everyone’s lives can be. We should raise everyone to the energy consumption level we have, then increase our energy 1,000x, then raise everyone else’s energy 1,000x as well."

by fakedang36 minutes ago|

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Driving energy costs to near zero drives down the cost for literally every other process, manufacturing or extractive or services. A 1000x increase in energy practically lets you extract so much material for cheaper that the cost of materials, and the associated logistics, goes down.

by rgmerk23 minutes ago|

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That is self-evidently true but misses the point.

The point of using energy is not to use energy. What matters is the services that energy delivers, be it a hot shower, a drive to the grocery store, a new house, a squillion tokens of AI computation. If we can get the services we want more cheaply by energy more efficiently, this is a good thing, not a disaster for humanity.

For completeness, I acknowledge that there are people for whom energy usage is inherently bad, which is equally silly. What matters are the downside impacts of the energy use, not the energy use itself.

by fakedang38 minutes ago|

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Well given that cheap energy follows Jevon's paradox, it makes complete sense. If each unit of energy becomes cheaper to produce (which renewables are driving today), then you should see more consumption of that cheap energy into economic activity. Economic progress is easily coupled with increased energy use.

The US has a lot of wiggle room wrt energy consumption because it has ceded the role of being the world's factory to China. At the same time, the US is the world's data center and software development hub, and the world's finance hub, and the world's bank. What does the UK have in comparison?