The west uses more resources per capita than the world as a whole. If all parts would try to use as much the resources would not be enough. We might deplate the food resources, oil, gas and also cause irreparable damage to the environment.

The west produces more than enough food for itself and then some. Obviously food is a renewable so you will never run out of it. Wood? Renewable and has been sustainably farmed in the west for over 100 years. Then there are materials like Aluminum and Iron that there are massive stores of in earth's crust that could never be depleted.

There are only certain things like oil that are not renewable but even the plastics and petroleum based products have plant based alternative versions, they are simply more expensive to produce at this time.

I worry about conservation of natural habitats. But that is a bigger problem in developing countries than currently in the West.

> Obviously food is a renewable so you will never run out of it.

Food relies on soil, a resource that we are depleting between 10x to 40x the replacement rate. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-...

> But that is a bigger problem in developing countries than currently in the West.

That'a because the west destroyed all the big animal habitats centuries ago. Did you know there used to be lions in europe?

According to this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_lions_in_Europe you have to go back to Ancient Greek and Roman times to find lions in Europe. But also states some species went extinct in early Holocene 11K years ago after end of the last glacial period.

But all parts do try and eventually will use as much as the resources the west uses. In fact, as the population on the west declines, the population in other parts of the world will make up for the resources demand.

We will deplete all resource and cause irreparable damage in all possible scenarios. I think that much is clear. I hope we are technologically mature enough to be able to artificially evolve until that happens. That’s our best bet.

This is true for the moment. I'd love for more science fiction stuff to get moving, like solar collectors in orbit and microwave beaming the power back to the surface. (Of course any high concentration of power is inherently also abusable as a weapon...) We also have to worry about the addition of energy to the earth as an acceleration of global warming, which might be offset by making the top of all of our cities and roads reflective (often white, sometimes clear metal) instead.

The west also invented many of these resources. Before we found ways to turn them into resources they were useless. You are following the same line of reasoning we heard about how the earth couldnt sustain 4 billion, 5 billion, yet here we are wealthier, safer, more numerous than ever because we found ways to transform completely useless materials into valuable resources.

> Environmental protections are actually enforced here.

From the device you are typing on, to the palm oil in most of your food, to the clothes you wear, I find it hard to believe that deep down people aren't even slightly aware of what that makes their lives "quite liveable in 2021" is built entirely on back of rampant environmental destruction elsewhere.

Would you really argue a bunch of kids dying of cancer from rare earth mining in someone else's backyard to make an iPhone is not the Western end-consumers fault when they know it is happening?

This externalisation and blame-shifting is not something to boast out loud, it's cringeworthy and embarrassing to read, I hope you revisit it in a few decades.

> Conservation is properly funded.

The extinction rate across the developed world is accelerating[1]. In some US states it's doubled in a few decades. A Harvard biologist estimates around 3 species an hour go extinct.[2]

Humans annually absorb 42 percent of the Earth’s terrestrial net primary productivity, 30 percent of its marine net primary productivity and 50 percent of its fresh water[3]

[1] https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/natur...

> The Report finds that around 1 million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction, many within decades, more than ever before in human history.

[2] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_...

> One constant, however, is human population pressure. A study of 114 nations found that human population density predicted with 88-percent accuracy the number of endangered birds and mammals

[3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/277/5325/494.full

[3] https://sci-hub.se/https://science.sciencemag.org/content/27...

>This externalisation and blame-shifting is not something to boast out loud, it's cringeworthy and embarrassing to read, I hope you revisit it in a few decades.

In a few decades China is going "externalise" its environmental destruction elsewhere. Repeat this until there are no places left to destroy and by "to destroy" I don't mean they were destroyed, I mean that people decided that destroying them should be illegal.