Modern civilisation is a civilisation of petroleum. Some people think it is a simple thing to shut off the pumps and close down the pipelines and live on renewables.
Can we abandon fossil fuels and moth-ball hydro-electric projects in favour of wind and solar – no. It takes 8 square miles of land for wind power to provide domestic electric use for a town of 100,000 people – with none left over for industry. The entire power needs of the same town including its commercial, industrial and municipal infrastructure can be provided by the coal from a single mine – with access to spare.
These thoughts come from a geology blog, Suspect Terrane – go to http://suspectterrane.blogspot.com … the relevant post is on 12 February 2015 and it is worth a read.