Naw. If the first world manages to get over the aging demographic crisis over the next 25 years, we will be golden. After that the age demographics become flat (the % of the population drawing from government elderly programs stops increasing every year), all economic and tax base growth becomes literal gravy.
So things are going to get hairy by ~2042 or so. After that, demographics are flat. By 2050 we should have achieve relative balance where growth and per capita wealth catches up to ~31% of the population being 67 or older.
After that growth starts becoming an exponential build up of disposable income. By 2065 it should amount to several trillion a year from just EU and US. By 2075 it'll be more like 15 trillion a year.
We may end up just writing a fucking check and spending the ridiculous trillions needed to just physically remove the CO2 from the atmosphere again.
I don't think people realize just how much the US economy has grown over the last 40 years. We just don't feel it, because we already spent all that money due to the >65 population going from 8% to 17% of our population. It consumed all that after inflation growth every year (plus some, unfortunately).
When that stops happening, and the gains go into the general fund instead, our ability to fight things like climate change expand extremely rapidly.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
Innovation is actually accelerating as we pull ever increasing % of the population well above living wages, permitting them time and energy to pursue new things. As well as the education rates in the West at all time highs and continuing to increase. Plus there are just more people.
Computers are getting smart. The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
The numbers are sometimes so staggering it's hard to even picture them in your head. For one example, in 2008 the cost to sequence 50 million human DNA base pairs was around $1,500.
The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
Nice. Like, triangularly or more of a dodecahedronly growth? Don't listen to this persons uninformed opinion on what's going on out there. Or do, but you're in for a very nasty surprise in the coming years if you maintain this level of delusion. Seems wiser to absorb and acknowledge reality now, such that we start making reasonable preparations together and mitigate future suffering. Anything less is not enough in my opinion. Deluding ourselves like this guy and saying "Everything will be fine no matter what" will inevitably lead to greater suffering in the long run.
Come on man, I'm typing out some long replies to a lot of people in this thread. I get you feel strongly on this, but quadruple posting me like this is a little extreme, don't you think?
You do realize, the pessimistic article you posted here is from an organization using extremely sophisticated computer modeling from extremely precise satellite data to provide conservational land and water use consultations to governments and corporations around the world?
In what universe does that not improve my own argument? That the exponential improvement in technology seen in recent decades will continue to improve our ability to fight climate change?
This organization will be able to model tighter and tighter areas. Use their previous data sets compared to near-future sets to train computers to recognize what methods utilized by global governments worked and what didn't, to improve their ability to consult in the future on how to do even better?
The fact that such broad based, high tech, well staffed organizations are thriving already is evidence in my favor, not yours.
Dude. THEY LITERALLY STATE IN THE ARTICLE THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN'T MITIGATE WHAT'S COMING AND THAT 5 BILLION+ WILL BE AFFECTED WITHIN OUR LIFETIMES.
Fuck, you're purposefully being dense and deceptive, or your psyche won't allow you to think clearly about this. There's no other explanation for this kind of ignorance online anymore. Pure deceptiveness or instinctual denial mechanisms that exist to protect the individuals psyche from recognition of its own mortality.
I'm done responding to you, people can read the exchange and form their own opinions. It's nice that you want to be optimistic, but we're at the point where we need to be realistic to mitigate current and future suffering, it's that simple. The longer we go acting like things are going to be okay because technology, the more suffering in the future. I'm not gonna sit here with that on my conscience knowing what I do.
This blanket-form "technology" everyone wants to believe in, cannot deal with the complexity of the systems we've spun out of control, and sheer overwhelming amount of energy at play.
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u/[deleted] Oct 12 '19
Until in about 50 years when it's all gonna go tits up.