[btschaegg]

In this light, I guess our curse might be that although we were able to part somewhat from the more prevalent "way of nature" (and strive to do so), we won't be able to completely let go of its inherent mechanisms.

Douglas Adams talks about a theory by Mark Carwadine in Last Chance To See[1] in which he tries to explain why the Kakapo has a terribly slow and inefficient mating habit. The idea is that basically, without mechanisms (like predators) to keep them in check, any population that reproduces too fast will trigger a chaos theory-like strongly oscillating population count (coinciding with the resources available per capita at any previous sample point) and thus, most likely, flatline at zero at some point.

Maybe that's our problem: We were able to remove many constraining factors limiting us as a species, but can't let go of the habits that made us succeed so far. Of course, that doesn't only apply to reproduction, but also to resource consumption as a whole. On top of that, our ability to exploit fossil resources only amplifies this effect, because we were able to continue without more immediate consequences so far.

In that sense, one might argue that even without climate change, we would have to change our ways in order for our lifes to remain sustainable.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See