What if humans are a unique higher lifeform that will never be matched in the history of the universe?
That seems really unlikely. That is, it's like the reciprocal of the Drake equation, multiplied by some additional infinitesimal factors.
Seems highly likely given how fantastically different we are from all other known life forms, especially in our mental ability.
If you assume humans are not unique in the universe, you're immediately confronted with the Fermi paradox. If the universe is filled with sapient life, wouldn't some of that sapient life be hundreds of thousands of years ahead of us--a tiny amount of time on the astronomical timescale, but more than enough for them to be observable in some way? Ultimately we're left with the unsatisfying task of speculating without evidence, at least for now.
It could be that life at our current level is more observable to life at our current level than more advanced life would be. The "Dark Forest" hypothesis from 三体 would be one explanation, but even that isn't required. It could be that advanced life can better meet its needs via technology that we can't sense. That was certainly plausible before we could broadcast over the electromagnetic field, which wasn't so long ago. Perhaps it is still plausible, because we're still missing out on something important.
With sapience enters ego...
But easy access to energy is gone. This is Earth’s last chance to bootstrap to the stars.
I never thought of it this way, but after reading your comment, this realization definitely hit me pretty hard.
Well, they're wrong, so...
That's not true: given enough time decomposing organic material will create new oil reserves, while all the metals excavated are still right here on the surface of the Earth used every day by us (cars, phones, ...) and ready to re-enter the surface once we are done using them.
I'm not sure I follow. How is it gone? We have fusion (solar) and fission. And we may find out how to more directly harness energy as we progress. I think our access to energy is limited by our lack of knowledge.
I agree though, we should get out on some new space vessels soon to buy some insurance and project ourselves into the far future.
If we go extinct, the next intelligent species (if there is one) won’t have the easy reserves we used to get started. You can’t jump directly from fire to fusion.
Give it a few million years and they'll have hydrocarbons the exact same way we got them.