A Post-Carbon Future for Humanity?

The Future of Humanity, Part 7

Image created in PowerPoint by the author.

This is the last post in my modestly titled seven-part series on the future of humanity. The series starts here. Based on all the evidence and analyses we have reviewed in the first six parts, we can now draw some conclusions as to what a post-carbon future for humanity might look like. It won’t be pretty, but my hope is that it might be survivable. Think of the 21st Century as humanity’s biggest, messiest, and most horrible teachable moment. We are either going to learn how to live on this planet … or we’re not.

The graphic above depicts the key dynamics I believe might define the next stage in humanity’s transition to a post-carbon civilization. The curves are purely conceptual, not quantitative, and not on any common scale, except for Time on the x-axis. The logic works something like this:

• Green curve: Fossil fuel reserves will continue to shrink until they are depleted or abandoned sometime in the latter half of the 21st Century (source).
• Blue curve: The decline of fossil fuels will spur technological innovation and investment to find substitutes to replace oil, coal, and natural gas as energy sources, especially in industrial processes that currently rely on them (see Part 3 for examples, also source). These efforts will peak over the next few decades…