“The dramatic growth of human civilization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would not have been possible without the discovery and exploitation of stored sunlight power and the ancient dead remains of organisms in coal and oil deposits, which, as numerous theorists have argued, already reached peak levels decades ago, or are soon reaching them, and will rapidly decline by 2050. The exploitation of coal deposits to power the rapid growth of industrial capitalism was an unrepeatable one-and-done shot, and precipitated the current climate crisis.”
