"If not, we'll go to plan B." "Which is?" "I don't know. I'll make it up if we need it." - David Walton

The whole earth is solar powered. The movement of clouds and air and water, the growth of plants and animals, it’s all just a big heat engine driven by the sun. Humanity has spent so long binging on fossil fuels that we’ve forgotten where it all comes from.

"When history looks back on this century," Paul said, "they will see it as an aberration. A bizarre spike on the energy graph when we suddenly realized the Earth had millions of years of the sun's energy stored underground and used it all up in a brief blaze of glory. The worst thing that ever happened to the human race was the invention of the steam engine."
"You're kidding me," I said. "All of modern human advancement and invention, enabling billions of people to survive, that's all nothing? Medicine? Global communication? Modern agriculture?"
"It's a glitch. It's like blowing your whole trust fund in a weekend. When the fund runs out, you've got to live on your income."

Nobody knows: they just believe, and then because everyone else believes it, too, it feels like it couldn’t possibly be wrong. But consensus doesn’t mean truth. In fact, it means a lack of critical thinking, a blind following of the status quo. Humans are really good at doing that, too.