Treasure Hunt

A treasure hunter planned to survive the long trek through Walnut Forest by harvesting and eating nuts. At the entrance to the forest is a warning: Walnut-eating is illegal! Too many hikers have been eating up this precious food source for the local wildlife.

Now, this is a law-abiding but treasure-hungry traveler, and the sign didn't say anything about cutting down trees. So why not raft the river in a walnut tree trunk? It's not illegal, as long as you leave the nuts behind...

This is exactly how I see the clean energy movement proceeding. The rallying cry is "don't burn fossil fuels," but it is not paired with any call for limits on economic activity or the materially-extravagant ends for which we operate the economy. So, humanity may eventually go along with "don't burn fossil fuels" but not until it has found many more non-combustion ways to use them, and found an alternative set of abundant materials to draw energy from, all to achieve the same ends. And with alternatively large-scale ecological destruction to go along with them.