Hacker News Reader

It's a good idea in my opinion, although if possible I'd rather they be more aggressive with their time frame. By 2050 we may already have reached Peak Oil. If that happens we may not have enough left to run cars in the city anyway.

View on HN

Peak Oil is about an inflection point after which the expense of extracting oil rapidly accelerates. It's a cost issue. And those concerned with Peak Oil are afraid that acceleration will be faster than our ability to switch to alternatives, causing a period of cramping where energy jumps from being dirt cheap to tremendously expensive, until we can build out the alternatives (a process that will most certainly take decades).

There will always be oil; we just won't be extracting it after a certain point anyway. 2050 is an easy target for that.

Very true and an excellent point. Even so just taking the cost of production into account, if us would-be buyers are unable to afford what's available then we've still run out as far as being able to drive our cars in the city is concerned. I just hope we can expand our use of alternative energy forms quickly enough so that we don't still have all our eggs in one basket.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com