▲ 775 r/AskOldPeople+1 crossposts

For those that were actually alive during the 1950's, was the mid century decade all that great?

My grandfather was born in 1934 and married in 1957. His take is that things were actually very difficult. The majority of the population did not have much money, and every task required immense effort. It seems that the 1950s are given the Norman Rockwell treatment when the reality was different.

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u/Haunting_Jacket6073 — 21 days ago

wealth creation is non-zero sum? Can someone point me to a simple thought experiment, fable, or example of?

Something about a kid making a lemonade stand? Or a farmer inventing the horseshoe, etc.

Most such examples o can think up myself involve the lemonade stand making money… but that money not simply being directed away from other things in the village

Seeking a simply example to describe the non-zero sum nature of wealth creation.

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u/chamomile_tea_reply — 22 days ago
▲ 166 r/peakoil+2 crossposts

World nears peak gas!

Gas' global share peaked in 2020 at 23.89%, fell to 21.75% in 2025 & declined for 5 years.

Coal peaked in 2007 at 40.84%, falling to 33% in 2025.

Renweable energy -- Solar + Wind -- rose from 18% in 2007 to 33.76% in 2025!

"The share of gas in the global power mix declined for the fifth consecutive year in 2025, despite a small rise in absolute gas generation. Strong growth in clean power, led by solar and wind, met around 68% of global electricity demand growth over the last five years (2021-2025), reducing the need for a significant rise in gas power generation." https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/gas-share-in-global-power-mix-has-declined-for-a-fifth-consecutive-year/

u/Sierra-Powderhound — 27 days ago
▲ 636 r/electrifyeverything+2 crossposts

Clean energy—the very inexpensive kind—is taking over the world

Nuclear power is on the decline worldwide. Renewables are the future. https://ourworldindata.org/electricity-mix

And is about to accelerate much faster as prices drop...

Something far more important than any single energy technology is happening right now: energy is being democratized. For the first time in history, the people generating power aren't just governments and utilities — they're households, farmers, businesses, and communities, installing solar panels on rooftops and wind turbines in fields, selling power back to the grid, cutting out the middleman. In 2024, global renewable capacity additions surged 25% to around 700 GW — the 22nd consecutive year renewables broke their own record — with solar alone adding 550 GW. Between 2025 and 2030, global renewable capacity is projected to grow by nearly 4,600 GW — double the deployment of the previous five years — with distributed solar (residential, commercial, industrial) accounting for 42% of that expansion. This isn't a utility megaproject story. It's millions of individual decisions by people who want cheaper, cleaner energy and no longer need permission from a power company to get it. Australia is the template: by 2025, rooftop solar alone contributed nearly 13% of the country's total energy generation, driven not by policy mandates but by households who did the math. And the math only gets better — solar and wind now have lower generation costs than both fossil and non-fossil alternatives in most countries, and that gap widens every year. Nuclear is the anti-thesis of all of this: it cannot be deployed modularly, cannot be financed privately at scale, and takes 18–36 months to build versus a decade or more for a reactor — all while locking up capital that could have built gigawatts of renewables instead. Every euro invested in new nuclear delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. The transition isn't waiting for a nuclear renaissance that never comes. It's already happening, rooftop by rooftop, turbine by turbine. IEA + 5

u/Sierra-Powderhound — 1 month ago
▲ 847 r/OptimistsUnite+1 crossposts

AI is overhyped, but hopefully will make our civilization wealthier

“AI will change everything about humanity”

“AI is the most important development since the wheel, or since fire”

“AI is a super intelligent sentience”

- sincerely: the people SELLING ai to you

u/chamomile_tea_reply — 1 month ago