There's also the factor of modern economies being largely services based, with production taking place at a massive and centralized scale.

That and the mass exodus of women and children into Poland and other surrounding countries.

Poland needs to be recognized in a big way after this war is over. They invited in over 2 million Ukrainian women and children, feeding, clothing, and housing them in arrangements that go from houses/apartments sharing with individual Polish families all the way up to mass government housing and relief shelters.

All while they're giving Ukraine everything they can spare in terms of war gear.

That's a HUGE penalty on any nations economy, and an even bigger risk in case of additional hardships.

And Poland took that on for Ukraine. It's must be a hell of a lot easier to fight a war when they know their families are safe and sound.

I think the only benefit over solar panels is energy density. It's hard to beat liquid fuels with batteries in terms of energy density.

Not impossible, just difficult.

Coffee grounds?

To produce biofuel?

That's the leftover remains of the seeds of a tree based fruit that takes years before it's productive.

This sounds like a really stupid idea to me.

we were talking about using high cellulose plant matter for biofuels, like ethanol or biodiesel. Where every fiber of the plant becomes biofuel, and it's still only economical to do it to corn in the US because of subsidies.

This really feels like a step backwards, unless this is purely about starting the algae and not actually suggesting we use coffee grounds as the primary nutrient source.