⚡ What if America had cheap, clean, unlimited energy?

Also: 5 Quick Questions for … economist Alex Tabarrok on the American way of innovation

In This Issue

The Essay: What if America had cheap, clean, unlimited energy?

5QQ: 5 Quick Questions for … economist Alex Tabarrok on American innovation

Micro Reads: climate models, the metaverse, autonomous trucks, Elon Musk’s Boring Company, and more …

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Quote of the Issue

“This reservoir can scarcely be other than the subatomic energy which, it is known, exists abundantly in all matter; we sometimes dream that man will one day learn how to release it and use it for his service. The store is well nigh inexhaustible, if only it could be tapped.” - British physicist Arthur Eddington, lecturing in 1920 on how the speculative stellar fusion process might benefit humanity

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The Essay

⚡ What if America had cheap, clean, unlimited energy?

It wasn’t just Hollywood in the 1960s — through TV shows such as The Jetsons and Star Trek — that was churning out visions of a techno-optimist, radical Up Wing future for America. In 1964, the influential RAND Corporation think tank published a sweeping “long-term forecasting” study for the US government based on expert opinion in six areas: scientific breakthroughs, population growth, automation, space progress, probability and prevention of war, and future weapon systems. Policymakers thought technological progress was advancing so quickly that it was imperative Washington identify and understand key macro-trends and their possible impacts.

From the study: “Because of the ever more explosive rapidity with which new technological developments are apt to take hold, it becomes increasingly important to foresee the advent of such impact to prepare for their social consequences and to avert possible calamities.” 

Here are the technological developments seen as at least possible around the 2020s (but also maybe a bit earlier or maybe decades later):

The RAND report is a good example — though hardly the only one — of the sweeping nature of postwar techno-optimism, even among the academic expert elite. It extended to all areas of human endeavor: biology, energy, transportation, and what we today call information technology. And there’s no doubt that cheap, abundant energy — generated by nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, geothermal, or maybe even space-based solar — was a key part of that vision. Humanity was surely going to use a lot more energy in the future. Indeed, that was the only way such a glorious tomorrow was possible.

But that didn’t happen. Why not? Let’s start with these three charts on US energy use: