Wow, Europe's investment in renewable energy has really collapsed. Part of the problem is that people think a Malthusian catastrophe would play out like a Holl

Wow, Europe's investment in renewable energy has really collapsed. Part of the problem is that people think a Malthusian catastrophe would play out like a Hollywood disaster film. That's extremely unlikely. The word "catastrophe" encourages this thinking. A better term might be "Malthusian crunch." It would be more likely to play out very gradually over decades. We would see gradual inflation in the cost of anything requiring energy, water, land, etc., and a gradual reversal of progress for the world's poor and middle class. The upper middle class may barely feel it, but they would notice it as they tend to live close to other classes. The rich may neither feel it nor notice it unless they eventually get caught up in rising political instability or populist revolutions. ... which looks a bit like today. If it eventually results in widespread death most of that death would be due to war, genocide, and disease, not direct starvation as you'd see in a Hollywood film. Most of the death would be proximally caused by political instability, and it would be lost on most people that this political instability was ultimately caused by resource constraints. There are two places it could eventually go. If technology keeps advancing while population growth slows, we might eventually balance out and even reverse the trend. The crunch would be a kind of narrowing passage through which we would eventually pass. If technology stagnates, population growth accelerates, or political instability causes vital systems to collapse, the result could be extremely ugly. Decarbonization should be a big priority because climate change adds yet another drag on the system in the form of massive damage to coastal cities and possibly decreased food production or increased cost, increasing the likelihood of the worst outcomes.