The amount of energy we use grows at a faster pace than what the technological advances make tech efficient. We also consume all resources faster than we have ever did in the history of mankind, even if the tech we use is far more efficient than ever before. No kind of miracle tech in the next decade or two will probably change this fact. And then there's shit like smartphones that need to be charged every two minutes and don't last past 1-2 years vs. mobile phones of the past with batteries that would last 1-2+ weeks with moderate use if you weren't on the phone every second of the day and which last 10 years if you don't treat them horribly.
Sure we are using more energy than ever - a lot of nations are in their stage of development where they are using fossil fuels to really get them from A to B. But China is investing heavily in renewables, and so is most of the developed world - the rate of progress of solar is really impressive, and Nuclear production will hopefully continue to grow.
The solution to our energy woes is not to
use less energy - as that is entirely unrealistic and might not ever happen - the solution is to continue to improve our energy tech. In this case, the realistic solution is absolutely a technological one, not a sociological one.
And I think you might be simplifying things when you point to cellphone battery tech as some sort of indicator. Mobile devices are a completely different beast now than they were in the past, and in fact trends support the idea that tablets/cellphones are replacing peoples need to constantly upgrade their desktop computers - hence the tanking desktop market. That they take significant more power is to be expected.
Do you REALLY think people are that easily turned into eating artificially made meat? If the taste or texture is even slightly off, that will cause people to turn away from it. People are pathetic like that. Peope bitch about smaller things and are vary of eating all kinds of stuff because of sillier reasons. That kind of transition will take decades (unless the governments force it on people, which would be political suicide for every politician) while Real Men & Women will insist on eating Real Meat. There's stuff like tofu & soy meat that are already pretty close to 1:1 to meat if you know what you're doing (it's not exactly the same, but you can use it in the same way, the taste is excellent if you know how to spice/marinade your food at all and after a bit of a transition period, you don't really miss meat all that much, if at all).
There is no fundamental reason we can't get lab meat to taste as good as, if not better than traditional meat - if we could do this with Tofu/fake-meats now, and have them cost the same as regular meat - I am sure more people would switch. So yeah - I think again, the solution here is a technological one - whether it be lab grown meat, or fake meat that is more convincing. Expecting people to stop eating meat, however, is not realistic.
The meat will also have to be made from something. That something is a resource that has to be gotten from somewhere or made from something which doesn't just magically appear to the places that need that stuff to make the food. Making meat in vitro will also need energy, and we aren't exactly near of 100% clean energy any time soon.
We're not 100% clean with energy, but we are improving, and pretty quickly. Do you think it doesn't count unless we're at 100%, and we should throw everything out the window until we hit that goal? We should encourage the trend and hope that we can get more and more out of renewables and green energy in the future - and we will, it's a guarantee.
And look into in vitro meat - the environmental benefits are potentially huge. It doesn't mean we no longer have to consume -anything- but it is a really big game changer.
Technology doesn't just magically pop up from thin air. We need to screw a whole lot of areas in the world to get all the metal & other resources needed to build all that technology and the processes used to make metals usable aren't exactly good for the environment. We also can't be sure WHEN that kind of technology is going to be out there in any kind of meaningful scope. If it still takes 20-30+ years for that technology to even exist as a potentially mass producable product + it'll take a long time for worldwide adaptation, then that might already be too late if we just continue doing shit like we are doing it atm while waiting for this miracle technology that will fix everything.
So the solution is to get resources from better locations - hence our new push to mine asteroids. And again, if your issue is that technology takes a while to be implemented, that isn't an issue with technology in and of itself, its an issue with like... time. Everything takes time, until we invent a time machine or some shit.
Technology alone is not enough. There are things that need to change regardless of technology. Clean energy isn't the only problem we are facing.
If technology 'alone' isn't the solution, then what is? I don't mean this snarkily, I just don't know -what else- we can use to help the problem in any guaranteed way. People are fickle, technology is slightly less so - so I'd rather bet on solar panels, space mining, in vitro meat and vertical farms than on people deciding to cull themselves down to a sustainable number and hunting for sustenance. I don't use that example as a hyperbole, it's just something that has been levied at me multiple times as an alternative to a 'technotopia' as some people like to call it.
R Main power sources in the near future will be solar and natural gas, with households being built and installed with their own solar panels slowly becoming a common option. Carbon will be phased out over a reasonable amount of time and humanity will have to deal with the damage it has already done.