if it doesn't apply to energy generation then it doesn't apply at all, since all life activities (from rhizomes to rhinos to online rhodomontades) depend on "energy generation."

we "generate" energy by burning stuff.  burning stuff is consuming, not generating.  just as coal and oil extraction and combustion are falsely labelled "production" when they are really "extraction and destruction."  we transform low entropy materials into (a) large amounts of high-entropy dross and (b) small amounts of arbitrarily or pragmatically valuable "yield".  the yield-to-dross ratio gets worse and worse as we exhaust the lowest-entropy (richest) and most easily accessible caches of source material.

technology (industrial machinery and processes) has filled in the gaps by accelerating and dispersing these patterns of activity.  for every pothole paved (filling in literal gaps) in a N American road there is an open gravel pit and an oil wellhead somewhere, creating big ugly gaps in the biotic and water infrastructure:  ripping out threads from vast areas of the biotic tapestry worldwide in order to "fill in the gaps" at the industrial core.  is it filling in, or digging out?  repairing, or shredding?  if we go by weight or volume of impacted materials, or square mile ratios of "improved" space vs destroyed or damaged space, it appears to me far more like digging ever deeper holes than filling gaps.

I think we can only maintain that faith in "technology" to pave over the cracks as long as we lose sight of two things:  the vast gulfs dug out to provide the material for caulking the cracks, and the unfortunate irony that many of the cracks are themselves a side effect of the technology we believe will fix them.

investment trap...

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

What gives me comfort is seeing those great big 2.5 MW windmills on 300 ft towers.  Our little island has the possibility to produce about 10X the amount of electricity we currently use via wind.  The cost is ugly and we may have to build some water reservoirs to act as storage batteries.

While the cost may make us radically change our lives, and kill a big chunk of our economy as airplanes don't fly on electricity, we can at least keep eating and won't have to ride to town on a mule.  I can live with a reduced standard of living and refuse to accept Kunstler's hyperbolic "we're all going to die".