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I have never heard of the film, but there are certainly limits set to how much energy we can consume, if it does not come from renewables. If the world population continues to rise and so does our per capita energy usage, it's possible that within a few hundred years we would come up against a different type of global warming--that due to waste heat. This type is much harder to deny, since to deny it you have to argue against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. If this becomes a problem, then are only hope will be renewables, since even nuclear reactors (fission or fusion) contribute to the waste heat problem.

I should say that this is not currently a problem, but it's also within the realm of possibility that it will be on not too different a time scale than greenhouse gas induced global warming.

EDIT: Maxx starts off with what I feel is a very misleading statement:

"Energy is neither created or destroyed, that makes it difficult to run out." Then he goes on to talk about all the sources of energy--if what he first said were salient to our energy concerns, then why we he talk about energy from the sun, from the ground and from the atom? Why not just reuse the energy we're already using? The answer again is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. When we burn oil or convert some of the mass-energy of the atomic nucleus into heat to run a turbine and power a generator, some of that energy--although NOT destroyed--is also no longer thermodynamically available to us.

EDIT for graphicconception: It's not that renewables "get around" the Second Law or waste heat, the point is that nature would be creating that waste heat anyway, we're just getting some useful work out of it before it gets dissipated as waste heat. Admittedly it's a tricky problem to do the accounting for. For example if we have a dam with turbines that generate electrical power, we're trading some of the waste heat that would be heating up the water at the bottom of the dam to waste heat that is generated in our electrical devices.

How much fuel we have left depends on where you look for the data. Some estimates say we have 150 years of coal left but only 40 years of oil. I think we only had 40 years of oil left 40 years ago, too! The oil companies only do so much looking.

Then there is gas. I don't know how much "conventional" natural gas is left, some estimates say 50 years, but it could be like oil - there might be more left than that. There is also gas that can be fracked. Fracking was discovered in Kansas in the 1940's according to one source. There could be huge amounts stored in what looks like solid rock.

After that we could use methane clathrates. This looks like inflammable ice. The Japanese are just starting to get interested in this. Some estimates say that there are more methane clathrates than all the other hydrocarbon fuels put together.

After that there is the nuclear option. Previously governments were interested in uranium-based reactors because an extension of the process to make fuel rods could also be used for making bombs. As John W suggests, there could also be the option of thorium reatcors. You cannot make a bomb out of this and the waste products are not so dangerous either. Norway is currently looking at this.

Basically, unless you are planning to be several hunderd years old then you should not run out of fuel - and maybe not even then.

EDIT: This is the first time I heard that renewable energy could get round the Second Law of Thermodynamics! Interesting ...

It's not the growing energy demands of suburbia, but rather the energy demands of the slums.

Billions of people do not use a washing machine to wash their clothes. Do you? Are you willing to go without one?

Europe and America's carbon emissions are not rising very much, and combined have a lower emissions than China and India. Those two countries are growing quickly as hundreds of millions are getting more than a subsistence existence. Suburbia is irrelevant compared to that scale.

A good source for evaluations of energy needs, not something based on religious anti-sprawl green ideology, is 3000quads.com

I saw the movie when it first came out over 10 years ago. It is out-of-date now but has I think still some valid points. A good source for more up-to-date information, though I wouldn't rely to heavily on any one source for a complex issue such as this, is here: http://kunstler.com/

The whole "peak oil" hubbab is due for a reset, and Kunster's original classic http://kunstler.com/books/the-geography-... makes the case for much of suburbia being unworthy of being sustained, if not unsustainable, on other grounds, but fossil fuel IS finite, the long term inflation-adjusted market price is going up, and the full social cost is much higher and going up faster. Nothing, least of all car dependent suburbs, is untouched by the reality that the global economy as we know it was built up on cheap fuels that are no longer cheap.

Our current pattern of suburbia is obviously wasteful and designed for private vehicles but the energy requirements could be met if we develop Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. Hydrocarbon fuels such as gasoline and diesel are simply chemically stored energy and we already know how to synthesize them from CO2 and H2O if given inexpensive energy. The transportation requirements could be significantly reduced with PRT ( Personal Rapid Transit ). If we do not invest in inexpensive efficient public PRT services, we will wind up with a version of PRT based on expensive, inefficient private self driving private vehicles shared in families, friends and car sharing organizations. The agricultural requirements could be met with vertical farming.

There's enough Thorium in easily accessible reserves for over 10,000 years at current energy usage rates. Note the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor was proven by a test reactor from 1965-1969. Industry didn't want it because it did not use proprietary solid fuel rods so there was no way for the builders to direct most of the economic benefit to them, the military didn't want it as they already had light water nuclear and the Thorium cycle did not produce weapons grade plutonium, the government didn't want it because it didn't need an army of operators, a single man could manage the reactor or it could even be left to manage itself, it simply didn't produce jobs.

Suburbia must certainly change but there is more than one way to do it. Suburbia is only exceeding our current means of providing energy and we have sources of energy that are only undeveloped because fossil fuels and conventional nuclear are more profitable and control of the energy is possible with oil and conventional nuclear, everyone has abundant thorium, you would not be able to manipulate governments by denying them thorium.

Energy =/= oil

Solar power can provide more energy than we can ever use. And the very safe CANDU reactor can use thorium, depleted uranium or spent uranium as fuel.

http://www.the-weinberg-foundation.org/2...

if anyone here has watched the movie, The End of Suburbia, can you please help me answer this question? Even if you have not seen this movie, any answers would help.