[connortomas]

I find it hard to get from, "Food, water, and energy shortages, exacerbated by climate change, could lead to instability and violence and the forced migration of hundreds of millions of people in the future" to, “Yet the probability of a more peaceful world is increasing." Food and water (and to some extent, now, energy) are base needs, and if those end up in short supply, it doesn't matter if we're "winning" or "gaining" in other areas. Fundamentally, a sustainable supply of food and water trumps everything else on that list, and if we end up losing at that, we've lost at everything... just worth keeping in mind.

[Symmetry]

Well, that's more a political and organizational problem than anything else. The US alone produces enough grain to feed well over a billion people (though most isn't consumed directly).

[InclinedPlane]

Imagine two scenarios. On the one hand you have a Bangladesh as it exists today struggling against, say, flooding or drought or brownouts. On the other hand you have a Bangladesh that is industrially developed and wealthy (say, as wealthy and developed as South Korea is today). Obviously a wealthy and developed country is going to be better able to deal with such problems, and is going to make it less likely that war or famine result from disasters or adversities.

[connortomas]

I can see your point, but, taking a longer-term view, what happens when we hit hard limits to global growth?

In a world in which every country is developed and wealthy... where in the world does that material wealth come from? I can't conceive of how such a world could exist without some kind of significant technological breakthrough or massive social change.

[InclinedPlane]

Are there hard limits to global growth? What are they exactly? What's the evidence that the Earth cannot support a population of 10 billion with wealth equivalent to, say, the current US?

Today there are potential long-term problems in the way we use fresh water and hydrocarbons, but those are not fundamentally insoluble, far from it they are immanently tractable engineering problems. Consider that by the year 2100 the global economy will likely be over a quadrillion dollars in size (in 2012 dollars). And it will be filled with millions upon millions more engineers, entrepreneurs, technicians, and so forth than the world of today. I find it hard to believe that such a world will have trouble growing food or operating desalinization plants or adapting to using nuclear fission power, etc.

None of this requires massive social change or technological breakthroughs, it merely requires that people invest money and effort into engineering solutions to problems as those problems develop, which is something mankind has excelled at for millenia and will be extremely well prepared for in the 21st century.

[tisme]

A bit of evidence to underscore just how much difference:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369307/Japan-tsunam...

If the same thing were to happen in Bangladesh it likely would take a bit longer to fix.