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Even with a population as low as a few million, humans could rapidly destroy the climate. Or 10B humans could live sustainably for a long time. The pain involve

• lisper 7y ago
  > 10B humans could live sustainably for a long time. The pain involved in the latter is fairly small. That is far from clear. But whether or not this particular data point is defensible, it misses the larger point. (And you are not alone in this. This missing-of-the-point is my point.) There are really two separate problems here, a short-term one and a long-term one. And by "short term" I mean like the next 100 years or so. The short term problem is that our rate of carbon emissions control the third or fourth derivative of the economic impacts of climate change. We could drop our carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and still not avoid many of the negative impacts of climate change because we're still at >400PPM and will be for a very long time no matter what we do in the coming years. The long term problem is that our entire global economic system is predicated on the assumption of eternal exponential growth in something, and that is not sustainable in the long run under any circumstances. At some point we're going to have to transition to at least polynomial growth, more likely an actual steady-state. AFAICT no one is even thinking about that.
• SuoDuanDao 7y ago
  When you say "the pain involved in the latter is fairly small" are you speaking from personal experience?