Yeah, energy capture is essential for civilization development. There’s a book that goes into this by looking at history called why the West still rules by Ian Morris. He also talks about how there’s a thing called the development ceiling so the problems of development so as a civilization captures more energy and develops it encounters problems in managing the kind of growth and complexity that comes from that, and, you can look at history as a series of cycles of civilizations either failing to manage that complexity, and then collapsing or managing to pierce the ceiling of development and enter the next cycle. There’s also something interesting, called the advantages of backwardness, so at the time of a civilization of collapse, and some kind of change, it’s often the case that more backwards parts of the world have some kind of advantage that that allows them to become the next core of civilization. So yeah, energy capture is essential to development and increasing levels of development are totally correlated with increasing amounts of energy capture, but that increase development comes with complexities.

Yeah, that's why I said this is an unpopular opinion.

Historical records tell us that energy consumption is a great indicator of civilization advancement, but so is territory. Now, the problem is that there is no further territory to acquire for us as we have pretty much exploited our planet to its bones.

Free cheap energy will just make the planet crumble under our weight.

Not energy in and of itself. Cheap unlimited energy will just make us push planetary boundaries even further.

We need a reduction of human impact on our planet, not an increase of it.

> how exactly is oil distillation or its results "burning down our house"

Likely a call out to global warming.

> how is that applicable to fusion tech?

One thing that is never really discussed in terms of fusion energy is what you will do with the heat generated from these processes as there is a theoretical maximum for how much heat the planet can dissipate.

Whether the poster is correct or not, its widely acknowledged that the ability to transition from gravity powered/wind powered energy to coal combustion fueled a great deal of the economic and technological improvements from the 1700s onward (we call it the Industrial Revolution).