>How about a fourth option, which includes: massive geo and atmospheric engineering, nuclear/fusion research/dissemination, desalination and water pipelines, and large-scale laboratory meat production from real animal tissue.
Without stoping the industrial economy (actually just slowing it down) this is a non starter.
This only covers the food production/water, and perhaps energy needs. What about pollution from production? What about plastics, etc? Even with all that, the US/Western consumption levels don't scale to 7 billion people.
(Plus, what about people not actually really needing 90% of all the crap that's produced in the first place? The main reason behind all that stuff's production is not human need, either to create or to consume those products, but as a way to make money. That's why they have to be marketed that hard, or why other items have to be brittle to "expire" artificially and drive a new purchase cycle).
>and one that may even let us maintain our standard of living
I'd think the whole idea for me is to NOT maintain our catastrophic standard of living (I'm a European, the US one is even worse by most metrics), but to go into a sustainable (and humane) standard of living, and expand that to the third world.
Without stoping the industrial economy (actually just slowing it down) this is a non starter.
This only covers the food production/water, and perhaps energy needs. What about pollution from production? What about plastics, etc? Even with all that, the US/Western consumption levels don't scale to 7 billion people.
(Plus, what about people not actually really needing 90% of all the crap that's produced in the first place? The main reason behind all that stuff's production is not human need, either to create or to consume those products, but as a way to make money. That's why they have to be marketed that hard, or why other items have to be brittle to "expire" artificially and drive a new purchase cycle).
>and one that may even let us maintain our standard of living
I'd think the whole idea for me is to NOT maintain our catastrophic standard of living (I'm a European, the US one is even worse by most metrics), but to go into a sustainable (and humane) standard of living, and expand that to the third world.