Nearly a year later I find this incomplete fragment from June 2016 in the drafts folder. Ah well, lets let it out as it stands as an incomplete fragment. I imagine I was going to say that the eco-technic dream (or nightmare if you prefer) is not a viable world, but that it has useful elements. Presumably I was going on to say something about the doomsdaysayer scenario, not fully accepting it as either inevitable or indeed a complete end-of-time. Life will probably go on, and human life may be knocked back but persist in islands in the storm, gradually adapting to very changed circumstances, but still pursuing the goal of all life - self-realisation.

On the one hand we have this, an eco-technic future on the other side of some major disruptions/discontinuities resulting from technology synergies. Headline: all road transport replaced by electric vehicles and no electric grid by 2030.

On the other hand this, human extinction by 2030 as a result of major eco-system collapse coupled with a global temperature rise in the range 6 to 10 degrees.

So two very different views of the future - can we reconcile them.

Looking first at the eco-technic vision I find it convincing in it's own terms. Yes the signs are there that certainly in the two specific areas he discusses (transport and energy), and potentially in several more, the conditions for discontinuity are in place and the trajectory is clear.

There may be factors working to shore up BAU. Perhaps it really is "different this time" (compared say with cars replacing horses, or the take up of mobile phones) and the forces of reaction, aka the fossil fuel and nuclear industries can hold back the tide. They are, after all, very embedded in the old state, well connected to governments. They may even, unusually in these circumstances, have seen they changes coming and have an effective plan to stop or delay them.

Some car manufacturers it seems have seen the light and understand that their core business is transport, not petrol engined cars

......