danarhea

Is humanity in decline? That depends - There is no doubt that there will be a population crash in less than 50 years, but what will the quality of life be for those who remain? If the population crashes to a level that the earth can support, then considering the level of technology at that time, it might not be a bad thing for those who are still here.

The main question is "Will civilization decline" - The answer to that is also yes.

Here is a controversial, but interesting, article. The philosophy behind it goes all the way back to the Greeks, but has been updated to modern times. Energy production, in all its forms is the key that makes the Olduvai Gorge theory applicable to the situation that we will soon be in.





Note: The good news is, that by 2060, all global warming problems caused by humans will have been solved, whether or not our politicians take any action whatsoever in the meantime.

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Jack Kevorkian for President's Physician: 2008

new coup for you

I think a lot of predictions of doom assume a constant level of technological development.

Yes, as a species were terribly imperiled right now. However, if we take real political action and put real resources behind the right science I think we can continue into the future without a retreat into pre-industrialization.

The West that is. I have little hope for much of the Third World ever crawling out of wretchedness.

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======OBAMA
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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

Hymns

Right now almost all of our problems revolve around overpopulation: famine; energy crisis; overpopulation itself; immigration; war; pollution, etc. It is obviously a sensitive issue, but until we come up with a solution our problems are going to multiply. The world was not made to hold 6-7 billion people. The more our civilization grows, the faster it will decline, and until politicians address this issue it won't go away.

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être et durer (to be and to last).

conquer

danarhea,

In the link the author(s) talk of electric "shortages".

As far as I know the recent problems in US -for example- is not the lack of resources but the poor planning to create more plants to provide power to the increasing population. The power itself never had failures but the system failed by overloads.

I guess that similar situations are found -for example- with Exxon in US, a company that can exploit more oil without problems but they prefer to exploit less oil and make more profit by rising its price.

It is assumed that in the future we will have problems obtaining sources of energy, but at this moment such is not the case but a manipulation made by some corporations and the poor planning of energy distribution.

danarhea

Actually, the point is that energy is going to be harder to obtain. Eventually, although there will be plenty of oil left, the energy required to extract it will be greater than the energy that can be provided by it. At that point, extracting the oil is a fool's errand.

rivrrat

They don't need to address it. It'll fix itself, just like the overpopulation of any other animals.

A bunch of them die, overpopulation fixed.

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Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Hymns

Human civilization is not structured like that. If there is a plague, we find a cure. If food is scarce, it can be shipped in for somewhere else. Truth is, every advancement we make for longer life or health is actually bad for humanity as a whole.

tecoyah

In the larger context, this seems invalid. Humanity is just another animal in the closed system we call Earth, and over geological time spans will be regulated by "Nature" as the system evolves and adjusts to change. We may very well damage, or even exterminate our species through our own actions, overpopulate, corrupt the environment, and out pace resource availability. But in a thousand years...Roaches will still be eating, Mice will be plentiful, and likely many species will be far better off should we leave the ecosystem.
As we extend our life spans, an equilibrium will be generated naturally, but it takes long periods of time to do so. When we change the parameters of the natural system (poor term as we are a part of it, even our technology), the equation will adapt to compensate, even if that means famine, self destruction, or exodus.

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Self-Banned