It is bad for the species to have fewer people. It's also bad for the production of novel art.
[1]: https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/what-is-doomsday-c...
How will a society without growth be flourishing?
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that economic growth requires an increase in natural resource use, pollution and waste, when a lot of economic growth in recent decades has come from increased efficiency and services that have not led to more natural resource extraction.
The idea of humanity without a desire for progress and growth is romanticized by environmentalists and parts of an "intellectual elite", when in reality it will lead to a complete collapse of society and standards of living.
We need a game-theoretic model of what such an economy would look like and some levers to arrive at it.
How do you define "easily"?
Sorry, I'm asking two questions that each deserve comprehensive answers.
I like the coca cola aluminium can example - if coca cola can reduce the aluminium used in it's cans, that means less natural resources used. But it also means more profit for them, as a better design means less material but they can sell it for the same amount.
This actually translates into better productivity and economic growth. Multiply this by a million, and you get economic growth from a more efficient economy.
Economic growth != more natural resources used. It means more wealth for humans, which is a complex thing. it can both mean more natural resources used, or it can mean more efficient usage of existing materials.
No, we are not being supported. You are coping.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction [3] https://greekreporter.com/2022/07/20/greece-wildfires-2022/ [4] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2022/09/11/europe-is-... [5] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/there-s-a-generation-...
Resources and population will both remain finite, fear not.
Even here on only Earth, there are more than enough resources for several times more human beings, and more resources are produced on a regular basis thanks to the sun.
Solar and fusion will, in the long run, be vastly more important. Talking about the how and the what of oil in terms of human advancement is sort of talking about printing ink production in 2023.
Sure, the Earth has resources that if distributed more efficiently, could support more people (some say by a magnitude). But are governments and companies incentivized to extract and distribute things more efficiently? Will they ever be? What is the cost to other species and the biodiversity of the planet? We’re already in the midst of a mass extinction event, and it’s sobering to realize that future children will only think of some animal species barely hanging on today as “dodos”.
The biomass resources that our growing population is shrinking?
It’s arguing on faith that we will move of the planet to defer living sustainably on the one we have which is a classic ruse to e able people to rationalize not changing lifestyles.
Unsustainable doesn't mean "Great thunberg is sad". It means our way of life stops, with an iron certainty. What tf do you think rising food prices are? They are a crisis of not enough resource. Using less of one resource (gas for fertilizer) necessarily means more of another (land). Same for housing. Same for electricity. There's not enough of anything.
The more "reasonable" people fail to acknowledge that, the more likely your midnight scenario ACTUALLY HAPPENS, because the people who will acknowledge it aren't reasonable, they're looking for targets, and History is just as certain they'll find some. Pretty much every European country has seen a big alt-right swing, and blaming Twitter for that is weak.
Economists need to acknowledge reality, magic beans will not always save us. We escaped once, by burning a hundred million years' of resource in one hundred and eating 70% of the land area of the planet on the way. There is no planet B.
"Increased economic prosperity and all economic models supported by governments and global competitors are based on having more young people, workers, than older people," Chu said. "Two schemes come to mind. One is the pyramid scheme. The other is the Ponzi scheme. I’m not going to explain them both to you, you can look it up. But it’s based on growth, in various forms." - Steven Chu
Healthy young workers pay the health care costs for aging workers and retirees, the former energy secretary said, a scheme that requires increasing numbers of young workers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/04/05/the-worl...
I would argue peaking hard and crashing hard by overshooting is worse than peaking slower and then steady very long decline.
A future where fusion and solar are the main energy sources we tap into would be beautiful, but to get to that point we are still going to burn a lot of fossil fuels to sustain the current modern amenities we got used to. The question is: how much longer do we have to completely shift our energy dependency? The clock is ticking at a very fast rate, we are not doing enough to be independent from our energy needs supplied from fossil fuels.
Believing that "someone will eventually figure it out" is a form of illusion of continuity, there's nothing in the Universe guaranteeing we will continue human advancement, there's no continuity if we don't work for it. Working for it means: facing that we are in very uncharted territory, which as far as we can predict seems to be leading to a catastrophic outcome.
The "long run" part depends on changes to be done right now to allow a "long run" to exist, if we continue the path we are there's absolutely no guarantee there will be a long run where solar and fusion are powering civilisation...
No. The world population is projected to increase till the end of this century.
> It’ll be good for the planet to have fewer people
Good luck hoping for population decline before irreversible changes in climate. Only hope is advancements in policy, research and tech.
Ah, there are other possible paths. 1) Extinction (which has happened to many species) without any evolutionary successors. 2) Artificial life (it evolves without us). 3) Something else evolves (long after we are gone) and becomes the dominant species on the planet.
Humanity has limited options, but nature doesn't and we can't count on it doing us any favors.
What makes you think it's being managed properly? Fertility rate 0.78 in Korea signals uncontrollable plummet to 0. TFA: 1.2 million small businesses have owners aged about 70 with no successor, prime minister Fumio Kishida: "Our nation is on the cusp of whether it can maintain its societal functions" - sounds anything but managed properly
Because they are headed for societal collapse, perhaps? Unless you think their prime minister is lying.