Thanks for reading and responding. I don’t pretend to know our exact energy sources 50 years from now, but I do know that populations are trending down, fruits/vegetables/sustainable farming/renewables up (these things have been written about in National Geographic and elsewhere). Compared with farming 100 years ago (relatively inefficient and land intensive, with bigger families to run these farms), future farming has a chance to have a smaller and more local footprint.

Of course this brings with it an opportunity to free ourselves from our corporate overlords, perhaps in some locally managed solar-powered eco paradise, where food gathering chores are honorable and shared (which I hint at, but is another subject). The emerging clean/cheap energy source? I’m not sure, but I do know that currently wind and solar are on course to take many years to produce ALL of our energy (due to lack of storage, intermittency, scaling time, vastly increasing energy demand, etc). I don’t think Next Gen Nuclear is anyone’s first choice, but if it can fill a 30 yr “renewable gap” (provide clean energy to replace that reluctantly/inevitably supplied by natural gas and coal at present), it may be the lesser of the evils (especially as it helps create a smaller ag footprint). As such, perhaps they will be required to have 30 year permitting licenses, or some such. Not saying “Build this Next Gen Nuke plant or I’ll we’ll force you to eat devastated rainforest cheeseburgers” here, but if there’s another ready option that fills this gap, I’d like to hear about it.