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Hah, same argument I'm having on the Chevy Bolt forum, with a similar graph. I've basically stated that given current technology, the only 2 ways to drastically reduce CO2 is:
1. Reduce global wealth
2. Reduce global population
Neither sounds particularly appealing, though both are likely inevitable.
There's a chance that future technologies can be leveraged to soften the blow to reduced fossil fuel consumption, but it's still a blow, not energy so cheap that we profit from it like the Greenies want you to believe.
As I've said, and NOBODY has countered; my utility allows me to pay extra to support renewable energy. If it were cheaper, they would invite me to pay less for it. How then is renewables cheaper if it's not? If you can't counter this simple criticism, the proclamation of renewables being cheaper is misinformation/ignorance at best, and a lie at worst.
Best case scenario: technology makes extremely cheap and green energy available to all. Now resources can be extracted at nearly zero marginal cost. An even worse problem then exists in that there are practically no controls to mineral extraction and consumption of physical resources. Consumerism goes on steroids compared to the fantastic spending we're already seeing today.
So the best case scenario is merely creating a Frankenstein monster more pernicious than the one it solved.
Alright, I'm an optimist at heart, so I don't actually believe it will be as terrible as this, but the solutions are nowhere that I can see on the horizon. The human species will need to continue their extremely good fortune going forward, as the problems only become more challenging as time goes on.
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