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Randallw said:
ALthough it is true that human relics could be recycled for minerals, aLso consider oil. I do not know an exact figure, but say we have depleted oil supplies so that they will only Last another 50 years. ALthough our technology may well come up with an alternative power supply, a less advanced culture that develops after ours may find it difficult to have an industrial revolution if oil is sparse.
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As an aside, Vernor Vinge's novel "The Peace War" describes a high-tech, low-energy civilization that I found fascinating. In that novel, high-energy technologies are actively suppressed by a global "Peace Authority", much like the Antareans in MOO, instead of being wiped out in nuclear warfare, but the result is a proliferation of extremely energy efficient, solar-power / geothermal energy based civilization focusing on super-efficient electronics.