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by jngreenlee
2482 days ago
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>I think our present trajectory is obviously unsustainable Curious what makes you think that, with some real hard numbers, etc. I think we've become very good as a culture at brainwashing ourselves into a doomsday attitude when it comes to planetary resources...yet we've actually done quite well at getting rid of or minimizing bad practices as we learn they are damaging. Nukes, CFCs, noxious smokestacks...sure not 100%, but getting better over decades. Yes I'm an optimist...I think the Earth is all we need, and based on scientific advancements and slow learning over decades (we barely even use the [deserts|seas|tundra]!), we could easily live well and without abject poverty at 100 BN+ in centuries to come. What will kill us off...I think it more likely to be external [asteroid|aliens|supernova] or inescapable [Yellowstone|Krakatoa|Earthquakes|virus|new apex species] |
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It would have been virtually impossible for virtually any percentage of hunter gathers to wipe out humanity let alone the biosphere. Eventually one person crazy enough may engineer all of our doom. This could even be so without malice aforethought.
Once you get to the stage of a planetary civilization expanding further gets fantastically harder. It's entirely possible that most intelligent species go extinct between getting big enough to destroy the requirements for their continued existence and actually escaping their planets.
The more obvious answer of ecological catastrophe is actually a lot harder. We could actually be well on our way to crashing and burning and still not be able to predict well enough that far ahead.