Let's not forget that the world's population will stabilize at 8.8 billion in 2045, and start to decline, a few decades afterwards - because of technology and progress. (The contraceptive pill, life extension, improvements in health, mass wealth, etc... - all this leads to an ever declining need to procreate.)

Science and technology may have brought us to the brink of collapse, but only science and technology can save us from it. I think we can agree on this.

No, we can't agree on that, Lorenzo.

This late in the game, technology has very little to do with the ultimate outcome. Ironically, only politics could save us, by instituting strong anti-growth, pro-environment measures and radically reconfiguring how and where we live. Not going to happen, of course.

We're on a self-destruct course nothing but a miracle---like the discovery of five or six Ghawars---could alter. Whether we make it to 8.8 billion is irrelevant, given that the human population must ultimately crash to below carrying-capacity level, estimated to be around 2 billion. And the Earth's carrying capacity is shrinking every year as we wreck the planet.

Don't little details like the dying of the oceans mean anything to you?

For a clue, read "Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update."

I think we agree, though: social and cultural technologies are technologies too. The science of political marketing and of myth creation has been refined very well since the industrial revolution. From the first gazettes in France over to the propaganda machines of empires to radio, television, and today the internet. Very powerful tools to create new myths and to influence people.



Care for a reference? Humans are not merely animals, you see, so any sociobiology-like reference goes into my trashbin rightaway.



They do, and we're regenerating these oceans as we speak. Just like we have been regenerating forests for millenia. It's what we do: we use a resource, when we see we used it unsustainably, we try out another approach and we do our best to restore what we damaged. This is us.



No, I won't. I read the first Club of Rome report, and it said that we would all be dead by the year 2000. That was 30 years ago. We're obviously not dead (zombies maybe, but not dead), and what's more, we've even achieved almost double of the targets that were then projected to be lethal to the planet.

So no, I'm not wasting a single minute on "The 30-Year Update on the Flawed Previous Report That Has Been Proven to Be Totally Wrong".

My dear cornucopian, you don't know what you're talking about. The 1972 Limits to Growth report said no such thing. The 30-year LTG update notes, regarding the 1972 LTG report:

"All [computer] scenarios . . . showed growth in population and economy continuing well past the year 2000. Even in the most pessimistic scenario the material standard of living kept increasing all the way to 2015." (Preface, page xi)

The point all the models demonstrate is that if we don't limit growth, collapse is inevitable. But you don't need a Cray computer to tell you that; common sense will do.

We are not "regenerating the oceans." What balderdash you come up with, Lorenzo. The oceans of full of trash, pollutants, and disappearing species. They're heating up and the coral reefs are dying, or hadn't you heard? And as they continue to absorb our massive CO2 emissions, pH is rising, threatening phytoplankton, which can exist only within a narrow pH band. If the plankton die, everything in the ocean dies.

The 2 billion estimate for carrying capacity is one I've encountered repeatedly in my readings. Google it or check out http://dieoff.org/page174.htm

Since when was marketing anything close to resembling a science?

One definiton of the word "myth" from wikipedia:

Are you suggesting that we are to be saved through the widespread dissemination of false and misleading information? Propaganda serves its masters, not its recipients, and will never lead to beneficial social change.

This is the crux of the divide that separates the cornucopians from the doomers. The cornucopians believe that we are "more than animals", and as such are not bound by the constraints which nature places upon other animals. We are endowed with superior intellect, sufficient to develop new tools and technologies with which to surmount any problem. No problem is too great for us to solve, so long as sufficient will and intellect is applied to its solution. They see this attitude as one of confidence rather than arrogance, while the doomers see the reverse. This anthropocentric attitude pervades both religion (Western religion in particular) and atheism, and has snowballed ever since Francis Bacon coined the phrase "Knowledge is Power".



The cornucopians see nature as something to be controlled, rather than husbanded, unaware that the more we attempt to control nature, the more she resists in often unforeseen and potentially cataclysmic ways.

Re. CrudeAwakening, definition of cornucopian as believing that humans are "...more than animals..."

Somehow that phrase strikes me as having an inherent logic error. Flipping it to opposites, we would have doomers believing that we are "no more than animals." And there the error remains the same even though its direction is different.

"Bound by laws of ecology" vs. "not bound by laws of ecology" seems the more accurate version.

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And yet, Lorenzo says, "humans are not merely animals."

OK, Lorenzo, I'm eagerly awaiting an explanation for that.

Do you mean that we have consciousness and free will but animals do not? That's easily refutable with reference to any recent theories in cognitive science: conclusion, it's a matter of degree rather than a binary yes/no.

So then, do you mean that we have immortal souls but animals do not...?

I wasn't meaning to offer a definition of "cornucopian", gg3, rather I was suggesting that the attitude that "man is more than an animal" seems to pervade cornucopian thinking. As you say, doomers appear better able to recognise that humans are bound by ecological principles in the same way that other creatures are. Cornucopians either don't believe in ecological limits, or, if they do, believe that these limits are susceptible to technological manipulation, and that, since technological progress is boundless, these limits are irrelevant to humanity.

Like the Easter Islanders?

It’s absolutely ridiculous how doomers keep insisting that it is a matter of fact that the Earth’s carrying capacity is around 2 billion people. “Oh, I’ve extensively read all the standard doomer mantras about carrying capacity, and the overwhelming conclusion is 2 billion people are the limit”.

You fail to understand even your own doomer logic.

The doomer argument IS NOT that the planets carrying capacity is 2 billion. It’s that at CURRENT levels of consumption and destruction the carrying capacity is around 2 billion. And 2 billion isn’t even the average estimate but rather the biased doomer position. Alternative estimates put the carrying capacity as high as 40 billion people! Most sane people would argue that both extremes are ridiculous. But regardless, the actual figure is beside the point.

Two important points that:
- Carrying capacity is variable, depending on many factors.
- As a population’s standard of living increases, the birth rate decreases.

Even if the Earths carrying capacity is indeed 2 billion people (which is by no means a certainty), the point is, this figure is the carrying capacity at current levels of consumption and destruction.

The carrying capacity is variable. What happens to the equation once you include: new techniques of greatly increasing crop yields (happening), begin transitioning to alternative energy (happening), reduce the massive amount of waste in many systems (happening), improve recycling technology (happening), strive for sustainability (happening)???

The answer is that the planets carrying capacity increases. Right now, the carrying capacity of the planet is increasing, not decreasing.

Doomers also often express an opinion that given the resources, the world population would continue to explode exponentially, an assumption that completely flies in the face of reality. As is clearly evident by the natural population levels (i.e. excluding immigration) of developed nations, as more and more of the world achieve higher standards of living, the world’s population will level off.

Doomers fail to actually understand the technology they oppose. For example, biotech. I have seen plenty of people on this forum express a vague fear of potential frankensteins, but they wont go into any detail. Thus, it is obvious they have not actually studied the subject, but are merely regurgitating something they heard.

You're right, the carrying capacity for people is variable. Duh! But: It's declining as we systematically destroy the carrying capacity for people. Only a fool would claim that our devastating activities are increasing carrying capacity through such miracles as improved recycling of beer cans.

When the entire Amazon basin is a desert, a process now clearly under way, will its carrying capacity for people have been increased? When the US Midwest has no groundwater left and the farmers can no longer afford the oil- and NG-based chemical stew that coaxes crops out of the ruined soil, will its carrying capacity for people have been increased?

When the oceans are dead from CO2 acidification, does the earth's carrying capacity for people rise?

It takes astonishing blindness to be a cornucopian.

You're also right, actual carrying capacity is unknown, and can only be estimated. Duh! But: It's also obvious, to anyone not wearing blinkers, that we've already exceeded carrying capacity, since the resource base and natural systems that our billions depend on are degrading severely every year, any way you want to measure them, a fact proven in scientific survey after scientific survey. The human flood is eroding the highway it travels on. It hardly matters if our numbers continue to grow exponentially or level off, since the current population represents an overshoot that nature must ultimately correct. Your assertion of a doomer "claim" of ongoing exponential population growth is a red herring and you know it.

It's also obvious that oil and NG exploitation created this population explosion. The curves for oil use and population growth over the past 100 years virtually overlie one another. Since the one-time free energy lunch is ending, I'll leave it to your imagination what must happen to the population curve as a result of the double whammy of soaring energy prices and degraded ecosystems.

There will never be another free lunch. But another free lunch is exactly what you claim as the antidote to all this. Technology! Recycling! Algae ponds the size of New Mexico! Miraculous frankencrops! Hubris, that's all it is. Man is an ant and nature will squash it, and you'll die clutching your wretched little Blackberry.

And you, of course, hold a Ph.D. in Frankensteinology.

Beautifully put, CrudeAwakening.

"When we see we used it unsustainably." In other words, when we see we wrecked it. Big Brother could not have written a more full-of-shit phrase, Lorenzo.

"This is us." I think I'm going to be sick.

Lorenzo, how do we restore the thousands of species we're killing off? Do you envision genetics labs the size of Rhode Island, churning out elephants and howler monkeys? Or are these creatures just an unfortunate casualty of your Second Coming?

How about a dead World Ocean? Do you plan to create a reasonable facsimile in your bathtub?

The degradation of the oceans is a prime example of how progressing science is helping to shape a better future.

Studies of oceanic degradation reveal that the degradation did not merely begin 200 years ago with the wide scale increase of fossil fuels, but rather it began thousands of years ago with hunter gatherers, and has been steadily increasing ever since.

Even as little as 50 years ago there was wide scale and complete disregard for the health of the worlds oceans. Large species of fish were over-fished with no regard for species life-cycle, and early nuclear waste was dumped directly into the ocean. As little as 50 years ago, with little understanding of oceanic science, civilization continued to devastate the oceans.

Over half of what we now know about the oceans we learnt within the last 20 years.

Thanks to the constant progress of science, we now understand the devestation we have caused, and thanks to this understanding, we now strive to rejuivinate the oceans with initiatives such as resticing fishing or even providing total sanctuaries in key areas and avoiding dumping waste.

There is a strong push to save the oceans today, and these movements are already seeing measurable success. This oceanic rejuivination, which indeed still has a long way to go but nonetheless is certainly happening, is something that is only possible thanks to the progress of science and technology.

Science and technology didn’t get us into this mess – human nature did that, and technology just gave us the tools to make the mess a lot worse. However, science and technology also gave us the tools to discover what exactly we have done, spread the message about what we have done, devise plans to undo the damage, and implement those plans.

Science and technology is the only thing that can get us out of this mess.