[NoImmatureAdHom]

This viewpoint is appealing, but the thing is: natural selection says it isn't possible in the long term.

For every person like you, who thinks s/he knows how things would be better for the environment and others, and how to get there (at least approximately), there is another person who doesn't give a shit and who will do long-term damage in exchange for short-term gains all day long. That person will out-compete you and other people like you.

We do, however, seem to be getting better and better at solving these sorts of cooperation puzzles. I just don't see a way out of the Malthusian problem (there will be more and more of the sorts of people who breed more, by definition). We might just have to live with a boom-and-bust cycle on this planet, much like other species, but on longer timescales. It's also possible we avoid the evolutionarily stable state and manage to successfully trap ourselves in some sort of metastable state.

It's all going to be fine and your life will be really good, though :-)

[hutzlibu]

" I just don't see a way out of the Malthusian problem (there will be more and more of the sorts of people who breed more, by definition)"

Why is that by definition? Even animals have more or less offspring, depending on the food offering/suitable habitat.

It balances itself out. In nature by starvation. But humans could find other ways. But btw. there are many many people starving and allways have been.

It is not like we are heading to a starvation crisis. We are already in it and always have been. The question is rather, of whether we can stop it one day and have all humans fed and cared for in a sustainable way.

[xaedes]

> We might just have to live with a boom-and-bust cycle on this planet

Reminds me of:

"The fact is, that wherever the extremity of winter frost or of summer sun does not prevent, the human race is always increasing at times, and at other times diminishing in numbers." - from Plato's History on Atlantis

[avgcorrection]

Boom and bust cycle? There’s been one boom and now there will be one bust. Unless you have some fancypants geoengineering idea which will stabilize the climate and put fossils back in the ground.

[nostrademons]

There've been plenty of booms and busts before, eg. the late Bronze Age collapse, the fall of the Roman Empire, most Chinese dynastic transitions, the destruction of North American civilizations by colonialism. This boom just happens to be bigger than the ones that came before.

[avgcorrection]

I meant that there has only been one boom-and-bust cycle to end organized human existence on Earth. That’s what I meant…