Drunk eBaying

Ethanol is all well and good until everyone starts to want it. Then we become royally fucked.

I already want ethanol. A nice pint of Guinness should do it.

On a more serious note, I'm pretty optimistic about the future of energy. People on their own will do nothing - there's no incentive to, because the damage will happen years after their death, or in poor countries thousands of miles away - but scientists are working on it.

Solar, wind, geothermal - all these things are improving fast. I've also toured a fusion plant, and the money being pumped into that is phenomenal (perhaps it should be higher, but that's another thing).

Things will get a lot worse before they get better, but they will get better.

Controversially, for things to get better there also needs to be less people on the planet. Technology is great, but it basically allows us to breed and spread more than we really should.

There was an interesting discussion on this in a recent BBC statistics podcast - an economist was theorising that technology allows more of us to exist, to the point that it doesn't, then we're miserable. Think food production, water supply, etc. Essentially, in this way, technology is a tool to increase the sum of human suffering.

I don't agree, and neither does he if you hear his whole argument, but it's an interesting point.

But how do you get people to stop having so many kids? Kids are nice, after all - I plan to have some one day. Who knows? Not me.

Train of thought rant over.