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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

U.S. energy demand has actually fairly steady. It was slightly lower in 2014 vs 2008. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=81

A wide range of things have been getting more energy efficient TV, lighting, computers, heating cooling, insulation, etc.

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Does this account for things beyond electricity such as fossil fuels?

For example, the shift from using gasoline cars to electric cars would reduce the amount of electricity we use, but would increase the amount of gas. This could be a net good, if we assume that the electricity was produced in a cleaner way.

I think you mean increase electricity and reduce gas?

It's good things are getting efficient up to a point however those kind of savings are unsustainable and in the longterm our energy use will continue to grow exponentially, including for environmental management. Thus it doesn't make sense to research power sources that aren't potentially 100s of times greater than our current usage.

"For my future life of luxury I will have to find a lot of gold so I'm not gonna plant potatoes today."

Boring, pointless potatoes.

That's a false analogy since farming potatoes is an existing technology.

You advocated forgoing research in a proven field for research in speculative fields. The analogy is about favoring prospecting over farming. In farming you can calculate an expected yield, in prospecting you don't know what you are going to find.

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