China allowed one child per family. How did that work out? Their population going to zero now.

No, the population of China is NOT going to zero. They are the most populous nation on the planet! Population GROWTH might be going to zero. This could also be labelled as “stable.”

Even if China’s population is declining, this just means there will be more resources to go around in the future.

If ancient humans “lived in a harmony with their environment” they wouldn’t have sent all the megafauna extinct.

They do it because they believe in not poisoning their children’s minds in government-controlled schools.

And a private school for rich selfish arseholes doesn’t pollute the kids’ minds?

@Dude
Redundancy in critical systems is rather important to function, be that individually or nation scale. Eventually you can go too far so would be better off putting that money somewhere else. But you really have a very long way to go most of the time. So to take your example I have 3 cars because I must have a working one at all times, that actually makes a huge amount of sense for many folks and services, and adding a 4th or 5th if the situation allows isn’t a bad idea either.

As the individual its good for me always getting where I need to go, which must be very important to me to have invested in that much redundancy. And the cost of maintaining but not actually running more vehicles doesn’t really change much if at all for adding another, might even get cheaper as you no longer need any replacement part and fixes done with massive urgency to maintain your required minimium level of redundancy. Then if my community knows I have a spare ride available its good for them as well, while equally I’d benefit from the folks next doors available excess of whatever was to them worth investing extra in to be sure of.

Or for instance you would rather want there to be a hot spare ambulance or three so you know the medical assistance you need isn’t sitting there tapping their foot as you die to the metaphorical papercut. And all because they have no way to get to you while the mechanic fixes their motor…

>ACs that make ice all night when power is available and cheap. Obviously this is not in fantasy land of every roof has solar.

Well if every roof has solar the only thing you need to do is delete the ‘all night’ – whenever there is cheap power available, which with lots of solar on the grid may happen in daylight hours sometimes, either way they make the ice and it stores that energy for future use…

>Compressed air storage sucks, humidity ruins everything.

It really doesn’t suck, the biggest flaw it has is a large footprint requirement – it just isn’t energy dense. But it is otherwise cheap, enduring, without rare/expensive/limited materials, and has huge flexibility. However if you design this system for massive peak power output or long term more steady storage and delivery your efficiency will be ruined trying to use it the wrong way (though you can with more expense be reasonably good at both).

Humidity really isn’t much of a problem, it often will mean the system collects water in the bottom of the tank (or whatever other spot you have deliberately picked as the lowest point of the setup). So yes eventually the water level will get deep enough it matters to the system overall, but at that point you can just drain it off. And any humidity left in the air as you expel it again doesn’t really make any odds.

The only thing the expectation of humidity does is limit you to using metals of similar electronegativity to keep galvanic action controlled and that do not get consumed when exposed to wet and air trivially on their own. Which is a long solved problem.

Also you actually have to have significant water content in the air you are compressing for it matter much at all, so the places that trend towards being very very dry won’t have to worry much at all, why the places that have 90% humidity as a default setting may be better off looking for other solutions.