Ben, yes because of the waste produced, the waste is toxic to all of life, hence we call it pollution. All pollution comes from destroying something created by nature, we liberate only some of Joules nature used to create the materials, and what remains is pollution. Before we did anything to the materials, a number of Joules is effectively associated with the materials. So we might say those Joules are put to use, and that was the positive process of nature creating the materials. When we destroy the materials, we reduce the entire count of Joules put to work by nature in those materials to zero, whilst retaining a tiny proportion of "Freed" Joules that we then reapply to whatever purposes we want the energy for, to create our own versions of things created.
So even if we put 100% of the Joules that we can obtain from materials created by nature, to our own creative use, still most Joules in the original materials are lost, remaining in material converted to pollution.
The difference with solar, is that nature never took any of the Joules we receive from it in anything, yet.
We are free to put as little or as much solar to use in our creations, with no cost or environmental impact to the existing life on Earth.
When we take it firsthand from the sun, we are doing exactly as nature does, creating directly from energy received from the sun.
Those Joules readily convert to fuel (hydrogen) and food (See "Solein"), for example, but also many other things, with no impact to environment by the subsequent consumption of those, like when we burn hydrogen, only water and oxygen are created, both useful products to all of life.
The trouble currently, with energy unsigned, we do not identify which kinds of energy use are harmful / unsustainable, and which comes with no harm, and is fully sustainable (only solar)
On fusion power, the amount of Joules generated in the "successful" experiment pales into comparison, when we think of the Joules taken from the things nature created, to get to the point of conduction of the experiment, around 60 years to date, and counting. Just the wages paid to everyone concerned has required a lot of consumption of fossil fuels, before we start considering the incredibly expensive facilities created.
And fundamentally, the duration of the experiment, a tiny fraction of a second, should come as no surprise, as what we are trying to do with fusion, is replicate the sun, but without the help of the massive gravity of the sun. And for what? Why not just use the free energy of the sun?
We are starting to do it, but as yet, the Joules received from it and put to use by us have never been monetised, since money as debt (promises to do work) can't be redeemed by something received for free with no work involved.
So with solar use scaling up, and extracted energy use scaling down, whilst population in developed countries continues to expand due to immigration from all the places we've ravaged, money is increasingly coming to represent nothing, in an economy now around a fifth powered by non-extracted Joules. As that fraction increases towards 100%, money will have to be issued on it sooner or later, to retain any value in money at all.
Now we know what is happening, all we need to do is wait until the free money is issued, it seems to me, then the remaining fraction of solar needed to get to 100% will happen very quick, when we have the money our hands to do it.
The question is, how much more damage will be done until then, and will we be beyond recovery, even by issue of free money, who knows.
To me, these are the end times, as identified by most religions. We are here because we largely ignored the advice of historical beings of higher intelligence who logically created us genetically, for their profit. We were built for profit, just like most things we build are for profit, in the profit driven world we have created, systemically, without many of us being individually aware of it. Since those guys who created us don't seem to be around anymore, they must have been the ones banished during the original war between them and all the others, who still are more or less around. Our creators, I mean us white folks, specifically They somehow knew would get close to this. There is just too much rhyming with religion now to ignore, it seems to me, we can physically trace the negative impact of every rule broken, in terms of energy. There really is good and bad energy, and we should define it mathematically.
Here is what I mean by signing it:
