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Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 20:38:42

There is currently 7.2 billion people on this planet. We add an addition 200,000 people onto this planet everyday. We add additional 70 to 80 million people onto this planet every year. Eventually something has got to give in. There is simply too many people on this planet. The planet cannot support over 7 billion people in the long-term.

I think there will be a huge purge of population sometime in the near future. That's because we are running out of every essential natural resource ranging from oil, wood, fresh water, fish, coal, rare earth minerals, natural gas, and etc. I believe several billion people will die in the span of a few decades between 2020 to 2050. When the oil supply in the world is too low compared to demand, the world population will receive a major dent. The world population will rapidly decrease as there is no longer enough oil to meet its demands.

So what do you say? Do you think Thomas Malthus was right the whole time about there being a point where there are too many humans to feed? Resulting in a massive starvation and death of countless people because there isn't enough food to feed everyone. I believe the earth will reach a point where there is too many people and not enough food, and then billions of people will starve to death.

Many people laugh at Thomas Malthus. Many people think Thomas Malthus was crazy in suggesting that there will be a point where there is more people than we can feed, and many people will starve to death. It has happened before in Ireland during the 1840s potatoe famine. It will happen again on the global scale when world oil production falls significantly below world oil demand. When there isn't enough oil, the food system would fail. Modern agriculture is highly dependent on fossil fuels. When fossil fuels become too scarce, food production will become too low to feed the population.

I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby JohnnyOnTheFarm » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 21:16:39

DesuMaiden wrote:I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?


An interesting topic to chime in on, as a first timer here.

May I ask a question? Your question appears to imply that someone might want to survive a Malthusian catastrophe? It would seem to me that with the quality of survival capabilities of most First and Second worlders, they would perceive any decrease in their lifestyle as unacceptable in general, and would be like fish out of water in an environment that might require them to cook some food they themselves have caught or grown, and then the thought of this going on and on and on..well...why would most want to survive?
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 21:18:07

T.R. Malthus was off by about two hundred years in his predictions being blindsided by the invention of the steam engine and all the progress that it led to. But I do agree that he is about to be proven ultimately correct absent a workable fusion reactor.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby DesuMaiden » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 21:32:14

vtsnowedin wrote:T.R. Malthus was off by about two hundred years in his predictions being blindsided by the invention of the steam engine and all the progress that it led to. But I do agree that he is about to be proven ultimately correct absent a workable fusion reactor.
How to survive it?
Be a team member of the biggest strongest team that controls the most resources and has the means to protect them.
In short be a US citizen.

Thomas Malthus originally predicted that the dooms day would occur in the mid 19th century. But instead it will occur in the mid 21st century. The Malthusian catastrophe is about to occur!
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 21:49:31

Did I not just say that?
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 02 Nov 2014, 21:55:17

Occur, yes. Exactly when and how? That's tougher. A slow downward trend is assured, but it may not come for quite sometime. Humanity seems a long way from accepting population as a problem.

It is possible, perhaps likely, that some regions will see more dramatic population decreases. But predicting the where and when eludes me.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby dashster » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 00:07:10

JohnnyOnTheFarm wrote:
DesuMaiden wrote:I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?


An interesting topic to chime in on, as a first timer here.

May I ask a question? Your question appears to imply that someone might want to survive a Malthusian catastrophe? It would seem to me that with the quality of survival capabilities of most First and Second worlders, they would perceive any decrease in their lifestyle as unacceptable in general, and would be like fish out of water in an environment that might require them to cook some food they themselves have caught or grown, and then the thought of this going on and on and on..well...why would most want to survive?


I have the same thoughts. I see people here talking about how everything is gonna go to hell in a handbasket and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Except, they appear to be talking about having prepared for it and living through it and seem quite satisfied with regard to that prospect.

One thing you would need is a big arsenal of guns, because for a while at least, a lot of hungry people would be coming to call.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 07:21:19

Population crashes due to overshoot are not gradual events and they are not uniform or absolute. The deer herd example is often used where population grows quite fast in good years but then one hard winter comes along when the food supply has become insufficient and four fifths of the herd dies before spring. The remainder has the reprieve of the summer and much less competition in the next few winters until the population recovers. Also the food producing plants get a reprieve from over grazing and restore the food supply in the spring and summer after the die off.
A human die off would be even more messy and random with wars, disease, and famine all playing parts simultaneously.
A large number of guns is not necessary as you can only shoot one at a time. A couple with ample ammunition for them is sufficient.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KingM » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 07:49:45

I would say absolutely correct. In fact, even in a country like Japan, with a crashing birth rate, it's only a matter of time. The people who don't want many kids are getting weeded out of the gene pool. Give the human biology a few generations to adjust to the easy availability of birth control and all you'll have left are the Amish and the Lubbavitchers.

As a thought experiment, eliminate every other person on earth, and leave only the Amish, their population doubling every 20 years. There are currently 250,000 of them. In 200 years, the population of the U.S. is back to its current level. That would be like imagining only 1/4 million Amish in the U.S. at the time of the War of 1812, and now having a quarter billion of them. 100 years after that, the Earth is back to its current population, only 100% Amish.

Obviously, that's not going to happen, but it shows how even a single group, even a tiny one like the Quiverfull movement with a few thousand of them, will quickly expand to fill all available space. The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Pops » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 07:51:39

I think it will be close. There is no food shortage now and not likely to be soon - some put the calories produced at twice that required for every person alive. The problem is the increase in yields is slowing, maybe faster than the slowing rate in population increase.

The bigger problem is distribution. As usual, globalization has changed everything and made more of us rich meat eaters. And nothing sucks up calories like a hog at the trough than a hog at the trough. As the rich world expands and consumes their rightful double helping, the rest will be growing poorer and skinnier. I think that is a bigger issue that the price of fuel either at the gate or to the market - at least in the near future.


BTW,
Malthus had the thinking religious man's problem, he knew smaller family size was a requirement to keep the population contained but he was saddled with the belief that any type of birth control was a "sin." His solution was to encourage people to marry later but continue to have children with abandon thereafter - except of course for the lower classes like the Irish peasants.

Sounds like that version of politics hasn't really moved forward much in the intervening period, LOL

The irony is Maltus' whole treatise was about how God used overpopulation and famine as a way of keeping Man from getting too lazy and that Darwin was influenced by that idea of competition (to whatever extent) in his formulation of the theory of natural selection and ... Evolution!

http://www.economist.com/node/18200702
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Whitefang » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 08:31:51

Standing at the edge of extinction,
not much of a brain needed to conclude we are in the middle of a succesfull suicide by consumption, together with most of organic life on Earth.
Sure Thomas M. were right.
Took some time though........giant Eart and us petty little humans making machines.

See what happens with food/water and martial law, people with guns who control resources.
Short term collapse worldwide, happening rightabout now, no reason to think we will have yet another harvest to feed everyone in the midst of an abrupt change of climate.
Not even our corrupt management wants this, they are not ready prepping I guess.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/ ... 95820.html

On Friday, dozens of people appeared at a local ravine overgrown with shrubs, all desperate to get any water they could from an obscure water pipe, the only source in their neighbourhood.
Things are so bad I had to get dirty sewage water just to re-use to flush my toilets.
Rosa da Silva, Itu resident
With empty buckets and plastic soda bottles in hand, they waited patiently in line, some for more than an hour.
This is where Rosa da Silva waited to get water, now a precious commodity in many neighbourhoods in this working class town of 154,000 people outside Sao Paulo.
Da Silva, who lives with her three children and two adult relatives, has been without water in her home for 12 days.
"I have to get water here to cook and clean because we haven't had one drop of water in our house (in the past 12 days)," she said.
Another Itu resident, 84-year-old Antonio Barbosa, shuffled up to the line holding a plastic bottle.
"It’s been 10 days without water in my house, so I come here to get a little so I can take a shower and cool down so I can sleep," he said.
Nobody is quite sure where the water from the pipe comes from or if it is clean. Some people say they have become sick from it, others say they have not.
What most here do agree on is that it is humiliating to have to do this and it’s out of necessity not desire.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-2 ... tages.html

“If the drought continues, residents will face more dramatic water shortages in the short term,” Vicente Andreu, president of Brazil’s National Water Agency and a member of Rousseff’s Workers’ Party, told reporters in Sao Paulo. “If it doesn’t rain, we run the risk that the region will have a collapse like we’ve never seen before,” he later told state lawmakers.


If you think you are safe, take the 6 seond snapshot, does not take much of our precious time of being alive,

http://www.latimes.com/science/la-me-g- ... story.html

It doesn't take much to understand why California is so worried about drought. Reservoirs are ever-dwindling. Rainfall is sporadic at best. And let's not forget about the millions of gallons of precious water recently flooding the streets of Brentwood.
More than 80% of California is in extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and the state's condition isn't expected to improve in the near future.
The Drought Monitor, which collects data from 50 different weather indicators, have shown an increasingly red California since 2011, the last time the drought map was clear.
Watch the 6-second snap-shot here.


http://www.prisonplanet.com/bundy-famil ... y-tsa.html

U.S. Airlines resisted to give us a refund at first, they insisted that they could not be held accountable for what the government chose to do. I showed them the boarding pass and the SSSS, then told them why I believed I was marked and harassed. They immediately began to process the refund request, one lady said “that sends chills up my spine that they would do that to you”. I thanked them and we left the airport.

This incident reaffirmed to me the danger that the American people are in. When a very small group of elitists use the peoples power without authority, and are willing to destroy the lives of those who disagree or stand up to them, when this type of unlimited power is commonly exercised without checks and balances the people are in danger.


About survival, be prepared to leave town to find more trees and less people.
Guns and ammo are heavy to carry, might be usefull tools at the start of collapse, no gradual decent into chaos when it comes to food. A rifle for hunting small game, light ammo but useless after that last round. Same for small handgun.
To become a special force in the army is fine for prepping and training but you do not want to be on the terror side when SHTF for real and at your home.

Having no army at hand to defend my house or even that bug out 5th wheel loaded with everything needed to come through the first winter into the wild.
One would have to be very picky where to relocate, fresh water is absolutely essential. Northwest comes to mind......
Long term survival and while out in the wild, why not seek the spirit instead of things we do involving more and more complex machines, nothingness which is death.
You would have to learn to take only what is needed, live of the land, forage, fish, trap and hunt.
Make fire, shelter, natural medicine and so on.
Last edited by Whitefang on Mon 03 Nov 2014, 09:12:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 08:56:07

KingM wrote:-snip-
The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.


Ridiculous. The doomsday scenario and the periodic population expansion and collapse are indeed the results of a species that places no constraints on it's own growth. However, the population statistics of developed nations show that population stabilizes long before collapse - for example, without uncontrolled immigration from less developed countries to the South of us, the USA would have a falling population today. Overshoot is the result of a culture that has had less than two generations of modern medicine and less than two generations of productive mechanized agriculture - i.e. a healthy environment and a plentitude of food, and a strong tradition of large families to overcome a chillingly high infant mortality rate.

The present World population overshoot is the result of less developed nations in China, India, Africa, and the Middle East enjoying modern medicine and modern food production. The stable populations in Western Europe, North America, and Eastern Europe all demonstrate that had we just had another century or so, the populations in the problem countries would also stabilize. However, we are already decades into overshoot - I remember thinking as a schoolboy as the World crossed the 3 Billion mark in 1961 that UN Secretary U Thant would have to do something to save us. Nobody did anything.

Later on I decided that the overshoot actually began around 1800 AD when the World population exceeded 1 Billion. That was about the time that the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population. Recall that at that time in Western countries, only churchmen and a very few wealthy people had formal educations. Only a few of these educated people considered themselves "Scientists", and were prepared to understand the doom that Malthus described. Those "Scientists" failed to do so, and in so doing, doomed the human race to death from Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death (aka the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse).

Note that we do not have to accept this fate, at least as a species. The obvious and most desirable alternative is to live somewhere else, in an environment without constraints of limited food, water, energy, and living space. That means leaving the planet, and living in Space. The crash will happen on the planet, the only question is whether the range of the human race is limited to that single planet when it becomes a place so damaged in the struggle of 7.2B or 10B or 15B people that it will no longer support life.

Understand that the crash of the Ecosystem has already begun, and is accelerating. Plant and animal species are going extinct today at rates that exceed the five other "mass extinction" events recorded in the fossil record. For example, the "dinosaur killer" Chicxulub asteroid that crashed 62M years ago on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico produced an apocalyptic event where 90% of all species went extinct over an approximately 1300-year period.

The human population overshoot is destroying our ecosphere faster than that. There are many implications, but prime among them must be the understanding that we cannot save ourselves by continuing to live here - the damage is done, the Ecosystem is doomed. It might take a millenium by purely natural causes, it might be a nuclear war in the space of a single afternoon, but there is no saving the World we know and the humans on it.

We save our species only by leaving. There may be a few generations of human life possible on the planet, but the planet itself is doomed, there is no fixing the damage. After a geologic age, it will recover from the human apocalypse.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 08:57:56

Whitefang wrote:About survival, be prepared to leave town to find more trees and less people.
Guns and ammo are heavy to carry, might be usefull tools at the start of collapse, no gradual decent into chaos when it comes to food. A rifle for hunting small game, light ammo but useless after that last round. Same for small handgun.
To become a special force in the army is fine for prepping and training but you do not want to be on the terror side when SHTF for real and at your home.

Having no army at hand to defend my house or even that bug out 5th wheel loaded with everything needed to come through the first winter into the wild.
One would have to be very picky where to relocate, fresh water is absolutely essential. Northwest comes to mind......
Long term survival and while out in the wild, why not seek the spirit instead of things we do involving more and more complex machines, nothingness which is death.
You would have to learn to take only what is needed, live of the land, forage, fish, trap and hunt.
Make fire, shelter, natural medicine and so on.

If I move any further into the trees I'll start coming out the other side. I only have to carry my own gun, the girls and the Misses can carry their own. Ill never get to the last round of ammo. I have a reloading press and a stock of components.
The water comes in gravity feed from the spring up in the woods. The wood fire is perking along nicely this AM and there are six cords stacked under the deck. Hunt and fish? Yes but garden and herd as well. Some of the easiest hunting is shooting the deer that are raiding the garden.
You are talking to a man whose board name is Vermont Snowed In after all. :roll:
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 09:41:45

KaiserJeep wrote:but the planet itself is doomed, there is no fixing the damage.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T66tLRR9drY

You really think humans can doom this?
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 10:05:18

We can doom our own species on the planet, at least. We have already done so. I was speaking of that thin film of life that itself makes this a desirable place to live. We are destroying that life at a rate unprecedented in all of Natural History. The astronomical body itself will perhaps change color slightly but will look not much different from that range.

To me, mankind is the only part of the Ecosystem that matters. I care not if any of the other species continue to exist. In my human-centric view, they are only there to serve humanity, as food or companionship or transportation.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KingM » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 10:19:50

KaiserJeep wrote:
KingM wrote:-snip-
The only possible solutions, long term, are either a population limited by the environment (in the case of humans, disease and starvation), or enforced government control over procreation, deciding who can reproduce and when. I'm not keen on the government option, but I'm less thrilled about the alternative.


Ridiculous. The doomsday scenario and the periodic population expansion and collapse are indeed the results of a species that places no constraints on it's own growth. However, the population statistics of developed nations show that population stabilizes long before collapse - for example, without uncontrolled immigration from less developed countries to the South of us, the USA would have a falling population today. Overshoot is the result of a culture that has had less than two generations of modern medicine and less than two generations of productive mechanized agriculture - i.e. a healthy environment and a plentitude of food, and a strong tradition of large families to overcome a chillingly high infant mortality rate.


You're looking at a blink of an eye biologically. We're programmed more to have sex than to like kids, otherwise the birth rate wouldn't be falling as a result of the availability of the later. All that means is that the people who either want to reproduce or don't bother to not want it will replace those who don't have enough kids. That's simple evolution. You can't stop it.

Now, I don't know how this will play out. Maybe our future is filled with baby-hungry types like the Duggars, or maybe it will be Amish and other high-fertility sects (I love how you dismissed the very easy and inexorable math), or maybe it will be black people from Africa, or most likely, some combination of the above, but it will happen.

The population has not stabilized, because it is not a single, monolithic whole. There are populations within the United States that are growing at rates that would crush the poorest African country. You either need to force the Lubavitchers and Amish to lower their birth rate, hope they somehow find their way to use condoms or birth control in spite of the fact that their entire cultures are hostile to it, that it literally defies the will of their god, or . . . what? Do the math, dude. You can count the generations on two hands before they number in the hundreds of millions.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 10:41:52

dashster wrote:
JohnnyOnTheFarm wrote:
DesuMaiden wrote:I think a Malthusian disaster is going to happen sometime in the near future. I just hope I can survive it. Anyone got any tips on how to survival a Malthusian catastrophe?


An interesting topic to chime in on, as a first timer here.

May I ask a question? Your question appears to imply that someone might want to survive a Malthusian catastrophe? It would seem to me that with the quality of survival capabilities of most First and Second worlders, they would perceive any decrease in their lifestyle as unacceptable in general, and would be like fish out of water in an environment that might require them to cook some food they themselves have caught or grown, and then the thought of this going on and on and on..well...why would most want to survive?


I have the same thoughts. I see people here talking about how everything is gonna go to hell in a handbasket and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Except, they appear to be talking about having prepared for it and living through it and seem quite satisfied with regard to that prospect.

One thing you would need is a big arsenal of guns, because for a while at least, a lot of hungry people would be coming to call.


Living in center city Philadelphia we know folks who reside in condos, and always have. They may be successful professionals but tend to keep to their specialty. Some, many, have NO practical skills.

When challenged with some kind of scenario, say power down for a month or six weeks in mid-winter, how do you heat? Flush the toilet? Climb to the 13th floor?, eat? they often reply "Well, then I'll just die."

That may be why we have so much denial, folks can not accept the alternative.

But there are alternatives, if even just to improve the odds. Which all we can really do anyway.

To my mind that is the purpose of P.O. to learn how to improve the odds.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby Ibon » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 10:54:16

KaiserJeep wrote:We can doom our own species on the planet, at least. We have already done so. I was speaking of that thin film of life that itself makes this a desirable place to live. We are destroying that life at a rate unprecedented in all of Natural History.


Yes, we are causing unprecedented damage

To me, mankind is the only part of the Ecosystem that matters. I care not if any of the other species continue to exist. In my human-centric view, they are only there to serve humanity, as food or companionship or transportation.


And what you just said here explains why we have caused that unprecedented damage.

The consequences coming our way KJ will radically change this human-centric view which you seem, with astonishing cognitive dissonance, to defend.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 13:05:08

I have no cognitive dissonance, all my views are consistent. I have no problem with TEOTWAKI, but I refuse to believe that civilization or technology will end. Tech is the only thing that enables 7.2 Billion humans to live and proper on one small planet. The population overshoot began killing the planet around 1800 AD, and over two centuries later, the Earth is perishing so fast that it can easily be seen in a single human lifetime. The true hubris around PO.com is the incredible and entirely mistaken idea that we can stop or reverse the damage to the planet. Forget that, you in truth cannot even convince a majority that their presence and lifestyles are the reason the planet is dying, much less get them to change their ways.

Tech will enable us to escape the fate of the Earth. The planet was only the creche, the true home of humanity is in Space - interplanetary space for the next few centuries, and interstellar space after that.

It matters not and I care not whether you agree with my analysis or not. It's going to happen anyway. After the die-off on Earth, the place will be squalid, ugly, and unhealthy, - occupied by cannibals that differ in no important way from orcs or zombies - save that they are born to and aspire to be more effective human predators. We will gaze down upon it and shudder that our ancestors occupied such an ugly and hostile environment. We will devise ever more capable robots so that no human ever need set foot on a planet again.
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Re: Was Thomas Malthus right the whole time?

Unread postby KingM » Mon 03 Nov 2014, 14:32:00

KaiserJeep wrote: Forget that, you in truth cannot even convince a majority that their presence and lifestyles are the reason the planet is dying, much less get them to change their ways.


The earth will do just fine. You could reduce the biodiversity to the level of rats and lizards and in a couple of millions years the planet would look the same as ever. It's humans I'm not so sure about.

Tech will enable us to escape the fate of the Earth. The planet was only the creche, the true home of humanity is in Space - interplanetary space for the next few centuries, and interstellar space after that.


Sure, just put enough hydrogen in the tank and a big enough engine and we can just blast our way across 10 light years of the void to the nearest inhabitable planet. Just make sure you install a speedometer that goes up to 100X light speed and you'll get there just as fast as our ancestors crossed the Atlantic during the settlement of North America. QED.

It matters not and I care not whether you agree with my analysis or not. It's going to happen anyway. After the die-off on Earth, the place will be squalid, ugly, and unhealthy, - occupied by cannibals that differ in no important way from orcs or zombies - save that they are born to and aspire to be more effective human predators. We will gaze down upon it and shudder that our ancestors occupied such an ugly and hostile environment. We will devise ever more capable robots so that no human ever need set foot on a planet again.


So says your imagination. I see no evidence that such a thing is technologically possible, or that humans are capable of making it happen if it were.
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