Climate change also exists. So do resource limits.
Something that doesn't exist is the science of living outside of an existing planetary ecosystem.
Do some research on how much is understood about creating a stable ecosystem out of sand, metal ore, and water. You'll find it's a good approximation to zero.
Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc!
The reality couldn't be more different. Giant rockets are barely the loading screen. Feeding humans, dealing with waste products without choking on them, growing or synthesising essential nutrients, building systems that do all of this in a stable self-sustaining way - these are all beyond hard.
And that's not even getting into psychology and politics.
So until that changes, running your own planet - the one you got for free, and which was working fine already - as if you're trying to test it to destruction to find out just how stable it really is, is an unbelievably dumb thing to do.
I seem to remember some guy saying something about that.
We’ve never let the fact that something doesn’t exist yet stop us. We are a species of inventors. We didn’t stay huddled naked in caves because they work and we got them for free. We aren’t meant to be like the rest of the ecosystem that mutely accepts its fate. We know we can die but we also reject the natural order of succumbing to predation, famine, disease and exposure. This planet is a cradle that we cannot lie in forever. Some day it will be dust and we will have to learn to walk amongst the stars.
Indeed, when we lived in caves, there were only so many of them. We totally blew past the cave sustainability model thousands of years ago.
I'm not saying we should be cavalier about pushing current limits, but I also wouldn't be cavalier about doing things to hurt today's humans due to fears that are not well founded (because, again, negative population growth is now baked in to the world population pyramid, so that soon we won't be pushing the planet's limits any longer).
> soon we won't be pushing the planet's limits any longer
What constitutes as 'pushing limits' depends on the kind of planet that is considered tolerable. For many conservation-minded people, pushing the limits happened well before 7 billion.
A population shrinking to a quarter of it's size is only considered undesirable to some because the economy doesn't factor in the externalities of having a large population - e.g., climate change, reduced access to nature, increased stress, polluted environment, species loss, food chain collapse. The solution is to no longer permit these to be externalities, and I don't see that happening without government intervention on a global scale.
As for anyone concerned about an ageing population, within the next few decades human labor shortages will be solved with automation - to the point that there will be a shrinking job market. As for caring for the elderly, they will have access to new mobility technology, and life extension - at first expensive, but then trickling down to poorer people before 2 generations.
> So until that changes, running your own planet - the one you got for free, and which was working fine already - as if you're trying to test it to destruction to find out just how stable it really is, is an unbelievably dumb thing to do.
Note that unstated in the quoted text is a strong assumption or implication that we are "trying to test [the planet] to destruction ..." with our 8bn people. It's hard escape a soupçon that when someone says or implies that, they really resent most of that 8bn people, maybe to the point where they'd be ecstatic if they got wiped out. I'm not saying you do, but it's a pretty gross feeling I get when I see that line of argument.
And look, if fertility rates for the whole world were 8 and trending upwards with the current 8bn, then I think I would be panicking myself, and agreeing with you, and predicting ecological disaster, terrible wars, etc. But we're not.
Almost throughout the entire world, fertility rates have crashed below replacement rate. Some cases are fairly surprising, like Iran's, which had a fertility rate of 8 in 1978 and has been below replacement rate for a number of years.
The reasons for fertility rates spiking in the 20th century and then dropping so far so fast are very, very well understood. It even used to be fashionable to talk about that around here, but not now -- now the Malthusian narrative seems to be in full swing without regard to the actual facts of global population pyramid (why??):
- enormous technological and medical advances lowered child mortality rates and increased life expectancy very quickly in the 20th century
- but it took time for the number of children people had in suddenly wealthy countries to drop to match the new reality
- political changes (and possibly pushing even remotely close to the planet's carrying capacity) have caused economic pressures that have driven young people to reduce their fertility, postpone family formation, or forgo family formation altogether
- those add up to us now being about to enter a negative population growth regime
For an example of political changes that have caused such pressures see Social Security and programs like it around the world. Because those programs make caring for the current generation of retirees the burden of the current generations of workers, that puts a not-neglible economic pressure on the working generations, and as fertility rates drop, that pressure increases -- a vicious (or perhaps virtuous, if you like) cycle.
Hello. Negative population growth for a while is now baked in to the world's population pyramid. You may now have a good night's sleep. You're welcome.
Climate change also exists. So do resource limits.
Something that doesn't exist is the science of living outside of an existing planetary ecosystem.
Do some research on how much is understood about creating a stable ecosystem out of sand, metal ore, and water. You'll find it's a good approximation to zero.
Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc!
The reality couldn't be more different. Giant rockets are barely the loading screen. Feeding humans, dealing with waste products without choking on them, growing or synthesising essential nutrients, building systems that do all of this in a stable self-sustaining way - these are all beyond hard.
And that's not even getting into psychology and politics.
So until that changes, running your own planet - the one you got for free, and which was working fine already - as if you're trying to test it to destruction to find out just how stable it really is, is an unbelievably dumb thing to do.