You "if"s and "so long as"s are doing one hell of a lot of heavy lifting here.
The alternative hypothesis is that fossil fuels have served as a form of whalefall benefitting humans, promoting a brief fluouresence of intense technological culture which will last so long as the resource is available, before fading back to the background noise level.
There's a shortage of perfect cheap, useful, abundant energy stores in the world. It would be a pity to degrade this one completely without a viable transition plan.
The alternative hypothesis is that fossil fuels have served as a form of whalefall benefitting humans, promoting a brief fluouresence of intense technological culture which will last so long as the resource is available, before fading back to the background noise level.
There's a shortage of perfect cheap, useful, abundant energy stores in the world. It would be a pity to degrade this one completely without a viable transition plan.