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The article switches between grounded projections and sweeping “never” statements in a way that seems misleading. It’s certainly possible that the early 20th ce

The article switches between grounded projections and sweeping “never” statements in a way that seems misleading. It’s certainly possible that the early 20th century ends up being a historical outlier in terms of the level of technology and wealth distribution and we never see a baby boom like that again. But we don’t know. Certainly saying we’ll never reverse the population decline is total speculation. I wouldn’t expect the same conditions to persist forever and at some point, people might be motivated by the decline itself.

eulgro 4y ago
The truth is that our current population level can only be supported by fossil fuels, which are becoming increasingly harder to exploit. As society collapses, technology required for extraction may be lost. Fossil fuels will take millions of year to regenerate.
- asvitkine 4y ago
  Why can't other energy sources support it? There's plenty of geothermal energy or let's say nuclear.
  - eulgro 4y ago
    Surely other energy sources can be a replacement, but for a lot of things, fossil fuel is still the only solution today (agriculture, mining, air travel). Can we manage the energy transition? Perhaps. I was always a pessimist, so my guess is no. The technology for it has yet to be invented. In overshoot territory, we're already living on borrowed time. The world's ecological footprint widely exceeds the Earth biocapacity has long been exceeded, now imagine 8 billion people who want to live the lifestyle of Americans. Demand in energy just keeps growing. Renewables don't even displace fossil fuels, they only increase the total energy output.
- actuallyalys 4y ago
  That might turn out to be the case, but we just don't know. Notably, there are some industrial processes that use fossil fuels directly and can't be trivially swapped out for grid power. Those processes might not be possible after a certain point. However, we've had fossil fuels for the entire history of industrial production, so there hasn't been pressure to invent other techniques.

eulgro 4y ago

The truth is that our current population level can only be supported by fossil fuels, which are becoming increasingly harder to exploit. As society collapses, technology required for extraction may be lost. Fossil fuels will take millions of year to regenerate.

asvitkine 4y ago
Why can't other energy sources support it? There's plenty of geothermal energy or let's say nuclear.
- eulgro 4y ago
  Surely other energy sources can be a replacement, but for a lot of things, fossil fuel is still the only solution today (agriculture, mining, air travel). Can we manage the energy transition? Perhaps. I was always a pessimist, so my guess is no. The technology for it has yet to be invented. In overshoot territory, we're already living on borrowed time. The world's ecological footprint widely exceeds the Earth biocapacity has long been exceeded, now imagine 8 billion people who want to live the lifestyle of Americans. Demand in energy just keeps growing. Renewables don't even displace fossil fuels, they only increase the total energy output.
actuallyalys 4y ago
That might turn out to be the case, but we just don't know. Notably, there are some industrial processes that use fossil fuels directly and can't be trivially swapped out for grid power. Those processes might not be possible after a certain point. However, we've had fossil fuels for the entire history of industrial production, so there hasn't been pressure to invent other techniques.