Nature is self-regulating so it always moves in cycles. Our agricultural and technological civilization imagines linear progress is possible, and even worse, the "leadership" of our civilization thinks planned linear progress is possible, so it's inherently opposed to nature or God. Now the priests of that civilization imagine they must replace nature with their own creation to move "forward".
One faction of the establishment--the "greens"--imagines a planned "sustainable" economy is possible. There's really no path there, though, and only a tiny fraction of the current population is moving toward a truly "sustainable" way of living.
The "elite" central planners' version of sustainable is just stupid and paradoxical. Their idea is the "smart city" and "sustainable city" where electric power and computer control make it possible to efficiently allocate resources from "renewable" resources. This future is just not possible. I think it really just won't happen beyond some potemkin village demonstration versions of "smart cities".
Similarly, I don't think a fully electric transportation system will ever happen without some drastic change in the technology of power production or energy storage. Try to imagine heavy equipment like combines and semi trucks running on batteries. I can't. Imagine trying to pave a road with battery power running the asphalt spreading machine. Nope. Take a look at the machines involved in paving a road. They guzzle diesel and/or propane. Take a look at a concrete plant sometime, or a concrete truck. None of that is going to run on electricity and batteries.
To have a "smart electric city", there's both a full scale petroleum industry and an electric transport infrastructure industry. History suggests that won't happen. The roads in our current transportation network are built by fossil fuels, so the entire transportation industry leverages the underlying fuel production industry. The whole suite of technology and infrastructure works together. The battery powered transportation is a competitor for the resources that go into the fossil fuel network. If we're really currently experiencing or about to experience oil shortages, I just don't think there's enough resources to convert the whole system over.
The central planners also imagine, for some reason, that everyone should live in cities with hugely centralized food production from monopolistic corporate/artificial systems, like Bill Gheytes Brand vat-meat. Cities and centralization require lots of heavy equipment and corresponding heavy infrastructure.
The infrastructure of that super urban techno-society will be extremely unstable and prone to failure. In recent years, outbreaks of disease in factory farms have sparked the culling and destruction of many poor animals. If the entire population relies on shitty factory food, the population will be extremely prone to starvation because the food system will be more failure prone.
The main problem with the "smart city" idea is that the central planning society is 100% incompatible with innovation. The automation and tech boom in the United States kicked off when computers became a consumer item. Garage shop and individual innovators drove the development of that entire industry. The USSR lagged way behind in developing computer technology even though it had a large science and engineering workforce. Central planning just sucks.
The truly "sustainable" communities will be small and spread out and have minimal infrastructure. It's more like the Sherp and bicycle world than the bulldozer and six lane road world. Those two worlds just don't co-exist. This seems very obvious to me, but eludes the central planners.
I think the next centuries will look more small scale and distributed as Babylon crumbles again. I don't know how much of the current suite of technologies can make it into that world. The microprocessor, for example, requires such an enormous amount of underlying technology and materials processing that it probably can't cross the bridge to that new world.
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