Comment I've always felt the great filter (Score 5, Interesting) 315
The filter is likely access to a ton of cheap stored energy.. enough to bootstrap an industrial level of technology from nothing to oil->fusion.
Solar/wind/thermo likely isn't enough to bootstrap.
Large sources of live carbon chain producers (e.g. trees, in our case) isn't enough.
In our case, coal got us to oil. Run out of coal and oil, and that's it, you're stuck if you haven't figured out fusion.
If you're lucky, something like coal and oil got you to solar/wind/thermo and some sort of energy storage tech.
Without any of that, you're never going to the stars.
Even with that, you're still not going to the stars, i think.
Everyone loves to whinge about societal collapse, wars, pollution, global warming, AI blah blah but eh, imo that's all nonsense compared to the energy problem.
