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Comment by quonn | Hacker News Reader

Long term, yes. But much of the climate change problem is decided in the next 25 years. Even if this reactor would work right now, building enough of them in that time frame everywhere, switching all industry and factories to electric, switching all transportation and cars and heating systems in all the houses to electric is very tough.

So it's still very challenging.

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Exactly. I’d also add that climate change is a just a symptom of us reaching the natural carrying capacity of Earth for humans, so adding new ways of generating power doesn’t completely eliminate the issue.

Very true. Though an abundance of cheap energy may prove helpful in brute force engineering some other problems out of existence. I'm thinking of recycling and geo-engineering in particular.

Fusion cannot produce cheap energy, in any case.

Fuel cost is a substantial fraction of exactly none of the generation methods in use.

Can you explain what you mean by "the natural carrying capacity of Earth for humans". You framed this like it's something that exists outside of technology.

Peak everything is happening over the next little while.

Direct thermal climate foring is a couple of orders of magnitude out from current energy use.

Classical computing is almost finished.

Many minerals are at the point where extraction takes a rapidly increasing amount of energy per tonne.

Land used for grazing and agriculture is over half of habitable land.

Fishing is wiping out entire ecosystems.

It's time to think about moving earth to a steady state economy.

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