"Those who believe in the ideal of human non-impact tend to endow nature with godlike status..."

"Those who believe in the ideal of human non-impact tend to endow nature with godlike status, as an entity that nurtures us if only we will live in harmony with the other species and not demand so much for ourselves.
    "But nature gives us very few directly useable machine energy resources. Resources are not taken from nature, but created from nature. What applies to the raw materials of coal, oil and gas also applies to every raw material in nature -- they are all potential resources, with unlimited potential to be rendered valuable by the human mind.
    "Ultimately, a resource is just matter and energy transformed via human ingenuity to meet human needs. Well, the planet we live on is 100% matter and energy, 100% potential resource for energy and anything else we would want. To say we've only scratched the surface is to significantly understate how little of this planet's potential we've unlocked. We already know that we have enough of a combination of fossil fuels and nuclear power to last thousands and thousands of years, and by then, hopefully, we'll have fusion (a potential, far superior form of nuclear power) or even some hyper-efficient form of solar power.
    "The amount of raw matter and energy on this planet is so incomprehensibly vast that it is nonsensical to speculate about running out of it. Telling us that there is only so much matter and energy to create resources from is like telling us that there is only so much galaxy to visit for the first time. True, but irrelevant."

          ~ Alex Epstein, from his 2016 post 'The Truth About Sustainability' [bold added]