Free energy! What would be the impact?

Question

Think about this one before you answer.

Answer 1

There is no such thing as a "free!" meal.  I should think this could also be true of your question.  Hope I,m wrong!!

Answer 2

The club of rome asked this question in their Limits to growth study back in 1970s. http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rt...

free energy would result in overconsumption of other finite resources like water, metals, building materials, and pollution associated with their production; leading to initially increased population, followed by a crash in human health & well-being sometime middle this century.

Every senario they tried, apart from limiting population & overconsumption by year 2000 resulted in a similar peak and crash in human civilisation.

So far trends seem to follow this early simple model pretty closely.

Answer 3

Everyone would love it!

But my question would be, "is it going to make the environment even worse?"

Answer 4

We'd get lazier, the environment would get more screwed, everyone would live in arid regions, and a lot of rich a******s would go broke.

Answer 5

Great short term happiness. But suspecting the source would be unsustainable - medium and long term misery.

Answer 6

There would be no impact, as the powers that be would either have it classified so that it is not to be released, or would have you bought out or silenced into secrecy.  You would be amazed at the amount of patents yearly that are classified by the government as not to be released.

Answer 7

We have it.  It's called the sun.

Answer 8

millions of people out of work.

Answer 9

Provided it was infinite, this would be the answer to all the worlds problems.  Think about it, with an unlimited supply of free energy, mankind could achieve almost anything.  Also, there would be no need for money, as the production of everything is dependant on raw materiels and energy.  If you had unlimited free energy, and the raw materiels run out, you could use the energy to explore the universe to find more raw materiels... this is the basis of the "Star Trek" universe.

Answer 10

i dunno, but im sure they'll find a way to tax sunlight. ugh

Answer 11

Total world economic collapse.

Answer 12

There is no such thing as free energy. Its coverted from one form to another.

Answer 13

not good. we would run out super fast

Answer 14

Why did you ask this twice?