There is such divergent opinions on this subject from the Club of Rome/Paul Erlich extreme Malthusian side to the extreme Cornucopian side of Isaac Arthur.
Isaac is an autistic genius who describes our solar system populated by 100's to even 1000's of trillions of people. And he is no fool. And in these scenarios human civilization could have minimal to nil impact on the Earth's biosphere. In fact may expand the Earth's biosphere to other planets and artificial structures in space:
When you have such extremes in views, you really have to sit down and do some real hard analysis to come up with anything approaching a meaningful conclusion on human's future impact on the Earth's environment and any limitations on the material wealth of human civilization. Likely an impossible & totally futile task for anything beyond a couple hundred years, since any such predictions are at the crystal ball level.
For these reasons, it is evident that such topics such as "Limits of Growth", "Carrying capacity of the Planet", "Finite Planet" are all nonsense.
Rationally, we should focus on our material & energy needs over the next century in order to support our projected population during that period in at least a current Western middle class lifestyle for everyone. And to do so with a reasonably minimal negative overall effect on the environment. Of which I would focus on the biosphere, the community of life on the planet, especially higher levels of life (i.e. I don't really care about viruses or bacteria unless that would negatively impact the former).
In fact instead of the constant negativity and Fear Porn of the DeGrowther Malthusian types. It would be far more sensible and productive to focus on our potential to expand the community of Earth biota to other Worlds. Starting with the Bioforming of Mars. That would easily be the greatest environmental achievement in the history of Earth Life since the Cambrian Explosion. In fact our failure to do that would be the greatest act of environmental destruction in the entire history of humanity, by far.
I've had this idea for years, that energy efficient cars and power plants should be build not because it might "save" the planet from destruction, but because humans should be encouraged to innovate and not rely on conventional technologies, which also aren't always the easiest to maintain (e.g a car that requires oil changes or fuel refineries). This has indirect benefits, such as smaller power plants, and less costly transportation systems (e.g.an electric transmission line over a number of gas stations). That said, it's not always simple to know which natural resources are abundant enough to substitute a prior resource (such as a fossil fuel) to transition to as an interim source (perhaps fusion or hydrogen being a third era after non-nuclear renewables)
Biology/psychology drives sentient beings to explore and learn about their surrounding ecosystems and stellar systems, we want to do this in addition to productively interacting with them to survive. Our comfort, knowledge, and longevity continues to greatly increase due to tooling, technique, the complex human built systems of institutions that continue because they generate feedback loops that create incentive for decision and behavior that drives the systems forward (such as god, money, and empire per Harari). We are decoupling to some degree the magnitude of wealth and knowledge from the magnitude of habitat and ecosystem change, our tooling's ability to decouple makes the 'eco' possible in ecomodern, via intensifying production. however we are not decoupling from the drive of our biology-psychology mediated through complex systems of institutions. neither social, nor biologic, nor eco, nor stellar systems are very well understood. More significant than free choice to conserve or a rational understanding that certain components must be conserved for us to survive, is risk and unknowns in how these systems will operate and what impact our decisions will have. the general pattern in history we know of is wise knowledge moves faster than bad outcomes, institutions move through life cycles but overall tooling comes fast enough to elevate human lifestyle. That doesnt remove all risk, and conceit can make the risks and missteps greater. phillips and the malthusian proposition that ecosystems are understood well enough to know which components must be conserved is preposterous exaggeration of current human knowledge. And we get things like energiewende as a result when this conceit undergirds poorly informed political paradigms. telling decision makers they are free to conserve or despoil may have good or bad outcomes, but it is also exaggerating what we know. we dont have that much freedom and harmful outcomes can and do result from our lack of knowledge. 'subdue the earth' while driving advance of knowledge also missed opportunities to conserve while advancing. so we need to skew decisions towards caution. Caution to avoid potentially large unknown hazards, anthrohumility is better and more realistic. We are learning fast and AI will speed us up, in the meantime it appears that complex systems often flourish in large smooth flows, and that should perhaps be our default inclination, where there is not a clear benefit in doing elsewise.
"So if nature makes human existence possible, then how could humanity possibly thrive on such a degraded ecological bounty?" More likely is the reality that humanity's degradation of nature has been quite modest and has not been as extreme as some activists want us to believe.
A fine reflection, but the bottom line is the same. What we do to reduce "externalities" generally benefits the existing biosphere as well. The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere probably as a much greater effect on other species than digging up the metals to build a solar panel etc. This does not mean that we cannot make addition efforts not to disturb existing ecosystems in other ways, not to convert rainforest to pastures and mine those metals in less damaging ways.
You probably see the "political" problem, don't you? Almost everyone wants to survive, very much not everyone wants nature to be "ecologically vibrant".
(I certainly don't. If we could make our planet into Coruscant or Taris and survive not die of hunger and/or lack of oxygen, I would do that in an instant.)
"Peak stuff" is a nonsensical term. What stuff? Energy? Metals? Mined materials? Food? Total mass of materials consumed? GDP? PPP GDP? Inflation adjusted PPP GDP? Without defining the term it is worthless and meaningless to claim "we are approaching "peak stuff" ".
In fact the only "stuff" you really need is energy. If you have plentiful energy, everything else can be recycled endlessly. If you have the intellect to figure it out. A lot of intellect coming in the form of AI. And nuclear energy is essentially unlimited, at least until the Earth is consumed by the sun.
There is such divergent opinions on this subject from the Club of Rome/Paul Erlich extreme Malthusian side to the extreme Cornucopian side of Isaac Arthur.
Isaac is an autistic genius who describes our solar system populated by 100's to even 1000's of trillions of people. And he is no fool. And in these scenarios human civilization could have minimal to nil impact on the Earth's biosphere. In fact may expand the Earth's biosphere to other planets and artificial structures in space:
https://www.youtube.com/@isaacarthurSFIA/videos
When you have such extremes in views, you really have to sit down and do some real hard analysis to come up with anything approaching a meaningful conclusion on human's future impact on the Earth's environment and any limitations on the material wealth of human civilization. Likely an impossible & totally futile task for anything beyond a couple hundred years, since any such predictions are at the crystal ball level.
For these reasons, it is evident that such topics such as "Limits of Growth", "Carrying capacity of the Planet", "Finite Planet" are all nonsense.
Rationally, we should focus on our material & energy needs over the next century in order to support our projected population during that period in at least a current Western middle class lifestyle for everyone. And to do so with a reasonably minimal negative overall effect on the environment. Of which I would focus on the biosphere, the community of life on the planet, especially higher levels of life (i.e. I don't really care about viruses or bacteria unless that would negatively impact the former).
In fact instead of the constant negativity and Fear Porn of the DeGrowther Malthusian types. It would be far more sensible and productive to focus on our potential to expand the community of Earth biota to other Worlds. Starting with the Bioforming of Mars. That would easily be the greatest environmental achievement in the history of Earth Life since the Cambrian Explosion. In fact our failure to do that would be the greatest act of environmental destruction in the entire history of humanity, by far.
I've had this idea for years, that energy efficient cars and power plants should be build not because it might "save" the planet from destruction, but because humans should be encouraged to innovate and not rely on conventional technologies, which also aren't always the easiest to maintain (e.g a car that requires oil changes or fuel refineries). This has indirect benefits, such as smaller power plants, and less costly transportation systems (e.g.an electric transmission line over a number of gas stations). That said, it's not always simple to know which natural resources are abundant enough to substitute a prior resource (such as a fossil fuel) to transition to as an interim source (perhaps fusion or hydrogen being a third era after non-nuclear renewables)
Biology/psychology drives sentient beings to explore and learn about their surrounding ecosystems and stellar systems, we want to do this in addition to productively interacting with them to survive. Our comfort, knowledge, and longevity continues to greatly increase due to tooling, technique, the complex human built systems of institutions that continue because they generate feedback loops that create incentive for decision and behavior that drives the systems forward (such as god, money, and empire per Harari). We are decoupling to some degree the magnitude of wealth and knowledge from the magnitude of habitat and ecosystem change, our tooling's ability to decouple makes the 'eco' possible in ecomodern, via intensifying production. however we are not decoupling from the drive of our biology-psychology mediated through complex systems of institutions. neither social, nor biologic, nor eco, nor stellar systems are very well understood. More significant than free choice to conserve or a rational understanding that certain components must be conserved for us to survive, is risk and unknowns in how these systems will operate and what impact our decisions will have. the general pattern in history we know of is wise knowledge moves faster than bad outcomes, institutions move through life cycles but overall tooling comes fast enough to elevate human lifestyle. That doesnt remove all risk, and conceit can make the risks and missteps greater. phillips and the malthusian proposition that ecosystems are understood well enough to know which components must be conserved is preposterous exaggeration of current human knowledge. And we get things like energiewende as a result when this conceit undergirds poorly informed political paradigms. telling decision makers they are free to conserve or despoil may have good or bad outcomes, but it is also exaggerating what we know. we dont have that much freedom and harmful outcomes can and do result from our lack of knowledge. 'subdue the earth' while driving advance of knowledge also missed opportunities to conserve while advancing. so we need to skew decisions towards caution. Caution to avoid potentially large unknown hazards, anthrohumility is better and more realistic. We are learning fast and AI will speed us up, in the meantime it appears that complex systems often flourish in large smooth flows, and that should perhaps be our default inclination, where there is not a clear benefit in doing elsewise.
"So if nature makes human existence possible, then how could humanity possibly thrive on such a degraded ecological bounty?" More likely is the reality that humanity's degradation of nature has been quite modest and has not been as extreme as some activists want us to believe.
A fine reflection, but the bottom line is the same. What we do to reduce "externalities" generally benefits the existing biosphere as well. The accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere probably as a much greater effect on other species than digging up the metals to build a solar panel etc. This does not mean that we cannot make addition efforts not to disturb existing ecosystems in other ways, not to convert rainforest to pastures and mine those metals in less damaging ways.
Yes, because we want to.
You probably see the "political" problem, don't you? Almost everyone wants to survive, very much not everyone wants nature to be "ecologically vibrant".
(I certainly don't. If we could make our planet into Coruscant or Taris and survive not die of hunger and/or lack of oxygen, I would do that in an instant.)
Philosophical discussions are interesting, but I miss the good science and hard data from the old Breakthrough Institute.
The Environmental Kuznets Curve is a thing.
People scratching out a day's subsistence don't care about the environment.
People who have the relative "luxury" to plan for the long term do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuznets_curve#Environmental_Kuznets_curve
Also, we are approaching "peak stuff", at least in the developed world. Some have said we have already hit it, some saying as far back as 1970.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/09/are-we-approaching-peak-stuff/
Capitalism wins again.
"Peak stuff" is a nonsensical term. What stuff? Energy? Metals? Mined materials? Food? Total mass of materials consumed? GDP? PPP GDP? Inflation adjusted PPP GDP? Without defining the term it is worthless and meaningless to claim "we are approaching "peak stuff" ".
In fact the only "stuff" you really need is energy. If you have plentiful energy, everything else can be recycled endlessly. If you have the intellect to figure it out. A lot of intellect coming in the form of AI. And nuclear energy is essentially unlimited, at least until the Earth is consumed by the sun.
Yes to all of the above.
And your point is exactly mine--we are continuously doing more and more with less and less.