choices?

[Commiss4r]

How much room of choice are you given in FOTW? I see that there is geoengineering and aerosol spraying options for "saving the world", but are there any renewable energy sources, or like biotechnology (at the least, biodiesel) options?

[Scarabaeus]

Biofuels from crops or algaes, wind power, tidal power plants, clathrates, (space) solar power, D2 & T2 fusion and HE3 fusion.

[Commiss4r]

OK good, cause a lot of these videos and walkthroughs are showing fossil fuels and that pissed me off since no way can we sustain ourselves off of them for another 100 years. Considering buying this game on the next sale now.

[Kamikazy/Lifehole]

You CAN sustain yourself on fossil fuels for 100 years, but it'd be pretty hard, and you'd have to be switching to stuff like natural gas, renewables, nuclear, etc near the 70-90 year mark.

[Delnar_Ersike]

CommissarRotke a écrit :

OK good, cause a lot of these videos and walkthroughs are showing fossil fuels and that pissed me off since no way can we sustain ourselves off of them for another 100 years. Considering buying this game on the next sale now.

Seeing as the original studio closed down and the devs have all moved on to other projects, I doubt you'll ever see this game on sale in the future. Technically speaking BTW, there are enough fossil fuel reserves on Earth to keep us going for 200+ years (eg. Venezuela's oil reserves alone could meet all of humanity's energy needs for about 100 years); energy crises arise not because "we're running out of coal/oil/gas", but because "we're not drilling for coal/oil/gas fast enough to meet demand". Once you factor in climate change however, unmitigated, 100% fossil fuel reliance for the next 100 years would be a death sentence (around 8 degrees of warming, IIRC).

[Commiss4r]

Well yea, just because maybe it could possibly work doesn't mean it's the right answer. Maybe if we could breathe methane fossil fuel dependence wouldn't matter, but we need to be focusing on renewable and free energies. Not to mention the damage and hazards fracking/drilling wreaks on the environment (and thus human civilization).

[Delnar_Ersike]

CommissarRotke a écrit :

Well yea, just because maybe it could possibly work doesn't mean it's the right answer. Maybe if we could breathe methane fossil fuel dependence wouldn't matter, but we need to be focusing on renewable and free energies. Not to mention the damage and hazards fracking/drilling wreaks on the environment (and thus human civilization).

Methane has an atmospheric lifetime of approximately 12 years; if the atmosphere was suddenly filled with methane, most of it would decompose to CO2 within 12 years or so, and assuming at least algae are still around, they would start churning that CO2 into O2. Fracking is only environmentally toxic if it is done in a half-assed, non-safe manner (eg. the way most fracking in the US is done), while the act of drilling for oil only causes significant environmental harm in the case of spills or leaks (so once again, when done in a half-assed manner). Funny coincidence: the environmentally unfriendly parts of fossil fuel extraction (note: extraction, not use) are also economically unfavorable, since oil spills and gas leaks result in reserves being depleted without economic gain.
In any case, the unmodded game wholeheartedly agrees with you and pretty much makes it impossible to win otherwise, while my unofficial patch modifies the game to make the answers simultaneously more realistic and a lot less clear-cut.
My advice: if you're really interested in the green vs. consumerist stuff this game covers, look at some survey and industrial data from various organizations like the US Department of Agriculture, NASA, the World Nuclear Association, OPEC, the World Monetary Fund, and the European Geosciences Union (I'm talking raw data, none of that interpreted cr*p that can be turned into "hippie" or "industrialist" propaganda).