alt Hacker Newsit is the first time we have harnessed all of the energy on the planet at once to power a single interconnected advanced system across continents. Mostly I'm drawing from a thermodynamics outlook[0]. previous collapses had unused high quality energy in other areas to fall back on. I'd love to read more about the growth towards China being sustainable in that sense.
> first time we have harnessed all of the energy on the planet at once
How are you defining “all of the energy on the planet”? By conventional definitions, no, we harness a tiny fraction of even just insolation.