| > But it's a world where the biosphere and humanity are not threatened with existential destruction. That's unfortunately false. The technology stack needed to divert asteroids is significant; bringing humanity to a pre-industrial revolution doesn't guarantee the safety of the biosphere, it guarantees the biosphere is unmodifiable by human activity. That leaves the biosphere vulnerable to threats that humans could use technology to intervene against but will be unable to. > No need to "ignore" anything. If one doesn't ignore the death and suffering but instead condemns humanity to it purposefully, with the flip response "But in a technological society, people will die anyway," that's misanthropic, and that's the part where his philosophy demands humans act other than they will. Fewer humans are suffering and dying---even with the threat of climate change---in a world where we have a technology stack that can move vast resources around. Avoiding the death of billions of people by crashing the industrial infrastructure so billions of people die is a non-solution. Practically, nobody will go for it. Philosophically, nobody should go for it; it's the solution of throwing up one's hands and saying "into Nature's good graces we should go," and Nature's graces have never been good. "Red in tooth and claw" is the moniker she tends to carry. There's no guarantee that if we keep the industrial society, billions die to climate change. Technology gave us the power to shape the climate and (if we choose to invest the time and effort) it can give us the power to shape the climate beneficially. If we pull the technological society up by its roots and return to the pre-industrial society, billions die from starvation, disease, and natural disaster, as we are no longer able to move resources to help them. |