We are overdue for the next proper industrial revolution. It will start when fusion power plant technology is commercially viable.
- Faster rockets to reach planets within our solar system within a shorter time and easier interplanetary transport of needed resources
- Terawatts of power that makes electricity too cheap to meter for households
- Terawatts of power enabling higher powered lasers for more precise machine tooling
- Desalination plants will be cheaper to operate and therefore can be made more widespread to expand supply of global drinking water
- Larger cities, larger facilities, larger transport vehicles, lower cost of goods being transported
- Oil while not necessarily limited if the wells are allowed to 'lie fallow' for a number of decades, is unable to keep up with human energy demand
- Competition between oil producers leading to wars of destruction and state-funded terrorist proxies
- Safer than fission reactions and doesn't leave behind radioactive waste
- Certain types of fusion reactions producing alpha-radiation particles that could be converted into electricity directly instead of traditional inefficient steam turbines running on heated water that is used for all current forms of power generation.
Detailed article on Helium-3 Fusion:
https://larouchepac.com/sites/default/files/helium-3-fusion_lovegren.pdf
At the moment the prototypes can put out at most 500 Megawatts of power, and the reaction is difficult to sustain. The fact we are still fiddling with prototypes in 2017 is a result of decades of corporate-run politics and agendas at work to keep us limited and dependent on oil and stagnate human civilization.