# Free unlimited energy is here, now what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 28, 2014, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995 "2014-01-28T23:27:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/41 "2014-01-30T20:07:03Z")
> [@Cornelius\_Tuggerson](#): > > The first thing the people who got their hands on the cubes would do is weaponize them. Step two will likely be trying to prevent or control other nations getting their hands on them. Step three would be a way to use it for porn, and step four would be a way to make drugs. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Learjeff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/94ad74/32.png) [@Learjeff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Learjeff)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/42 "2014-01-30T20:56:31Z")
Change causes upset. Major changes cause major upsets! Even really good ones like free energy. The first big upsets will be the economic upheaval, as huge sectors of the economy collapse. Fortunately that won’t happen quite overnight. But our $5T investment in the oil economy will turn out to be worth a tiny fraction of that, and there will be consequences. (Big Oil would probably try to make the cubes illegal! lol. They’d fail, though.) Another issue would be that resource consumption would go through the roof – it would become the new bottleneck for what you can afford. It would also lead to a big increase in all kinds of pollution, anywhere it’s not already controlled. To make matters worse, end users might end up being the major sources of pollution, rather than industry, so it’d be harder to police infractions. > [@Mangetout](#): > > Heat pollution might start to be a worry. Light pollution certainly would run rampant. > > But yeah. Flying cars. My sentiments exactly. However, reducing carbon emissions to nearly zero will have a bigger net effect than the heat of all these energy cubes – at least, at first, and by the time that the total heat is significant, we’ll find a way to pump it out. But, like light pollution, the immediate problem won’t be global but local, especially in metro areas. > [@andros](#): > > Free energy is pretty much the way to every utopian science fiction scenario ever. It’s the biggest, silliest magic wand in the book. Food and water become cheaper and more plentiful, transportation costs become essentially nil (further reducing the costs and increasing the availability of food and water), manufacturing becomes ludicrously cheaper. Poverty is eliminated. Most pollution disappears. Space travel becomes viable. > > Remove power needs and you remove every technological bottleneck there is, and damn near all the sociopolitical ones. It’s magic. Yeah, eventually. But there will be some massive bumps in the road. (I don’t think it quite makes space travel a reality, though it might get us a bit closer. Maybe if they have super-cubes with higher wattage. I didn’t do the math, but I think it takes a lot of watts to do significant delta-V in human timeframes.) ---
**Author:** ![andros](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e480ec/32.png) [@andros](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andros)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/43 "2014-01-30T21:11:49Z")
> [@Learjeff](#): > > Another issue would be that resource consumption would go through the roof – it would become the new bottleneck for what you can afford. Agreed, but that’s offset by astoundingly cheaper manufacturing and recycling. > [@](#): > > It would also lead to a big increase in all kinds of pollution, anywhere it’s not already controlled. To make matters worse, end users might end up being the major sources of pollution, rather than industry, so it’d be harder to police infractions. Mmmmaybe. But what pollution, besides noise and light? We’re no longer burning coal or oil. Not sure about heat in this scenario; you’re absolutely right that it’ll be a problem, but again only in the short-term IMO. > [@](#): > > Yeah, eventually. But there will be some massive bumps in the road. Absolutely. > [@](#): > > (I don’t think it quite makes space travel a reality, though it might get us a bit closer. Maybe if they have super-cubes with higher wattage. I didn’t do the math, but I think it takes a lot of watts to do significant delta-V in human timeframes.) Sure, but with unlimited power comes essentially unlimited superlight materials, along with almost unlimited smallcraft to LEO, GEO, and Luna. Remove power constraints and we could have a beanstalk in no time, followed by a railgun on the moon, followed by broad human presence in the belt. You’re completely right that delta-vee becomes an issue after that, but that comes back to the only real bottlenecks left: time and warm bodies. We’ve got plenty of the latter; the former, with enough power, will eventually solve itself. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/44 "2014-01-30T21:44:30Z")
> [@andros](#): > > Free energy is pretty much the way to every utopian science fiction scenario ever. It’s the biggest, silliest magic wand in the book. Food and water become cheaper and more plentiful, transportation costs become essentially nil (further reducing the costs and increasing the availability of food and water), manufacturing becomes ludicrously cheaper. Poverty is eliminated. Most pollution disappears. Space travel becomes viable. > > Remove power needs and you remove every technological bottleneck there is, and damn near all the sociopolitical ones. It’s magic. Elecrtricity itself is a technology that would CERTAINLY be considered magic by almost everyone living 200 years before it’s widespread use. Ditto for radio and television. Let’s not even think about computers. Magic is commonplace in our world. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/45 "2014-01-30T21:49:08Z")
> [@Gretchion](#): > > So what happens in the Middle East once the world doesn’t need their oil anymore? They go back to their endless internecine squabbling and leave the rest of the world alone. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995/46 "2014-01-30T21:56:22Z")
> [@andros](#): > > Step three would be a way to use it for porn, and step four would be a way to make drugs. 😃 Step one will be to use it for porn, in a sense: to power the sexbots that will get the population under control by [turning us all Japanese.](http://darrowmillerandfriends.com/2013/10/03/japan-turing-out-the-lights/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-unlimited-energy-is-here-now-what/679995.md?page=2)