tilak doshi

Building a replacement for fossil fuels still requires fossil fuels. What if that effort consumes the very resources needed to keep civilisation running? That is the dilemma Richard Lyon explores in The Energy Trap. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries require mining, refining, manufacturing and transport—all heavily dependent on fossil energy. Lyon argues that wind and solar cannot replace hydrocarbons at industrial scale and that building them accelerates the depletion of the fossil resources on which society still relies. With cheap conventional oil declining, he sees an “energy trap”: spending a dwindling inheritance on a replacement that cannot sustain modern industrial civilisation. His proposed escape is a major expansion of nuclear power, accompanied by a planned reduction in total energy use. Energy economist @tilakdoshi shares much of Lyon’s criticism of the renewable energy transition. But he challenges the leap from resource depletion to unavoidable economic contraction. Oil resources, Doshi argues, are not a fixed economic quantity. Technology, investment and prices change what can be recovered profitably. Horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing opened up resources previously considered uneconomic. Nor does a lower energy return automatically mean that an oil project cannot make money. Their disagreement matters. Both recognise the essential role of fossil fuels and the limitations of wind and solar. But Lyon sees a future that requires managing scarcity; Doshi argues that this outlook underestimates the capacity of markets, innovation and human ingenuity to overcome constraints.

From The Limits to Growth (1972) to the Planetary Health Check (2026): according to economist @tilakdoshi, mainly the packaging has changed. The message remains familiar: humanity is breaching the planet’s limits, time is running out — but disaster can still be avoided if society undergoes a far-reaching economic and social transformation. Doshi therefore asks a fundamental question: who actually decides when a “planetary boundary” has been crossed? Physics — or the researchers who selected the boundary? More than 60 scientists contributed to the Planetary Health Check. But science is not decided by majority vote. Doshi recalls Albert Einstein’s response to the 1931 book Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein: if he were wrong, one author would have been enough. Sixty scientists do not make a hypothesis true. Evidence, testability and falsifiability ultimately matter. Doshi’s conclusion: the doom thinking of 1972 is back more than half a century later — in a new scientific jacket.