Resources is something we invent and use not something we deplete. We use these resources to make the world even safer, richers, to pull more people out of poverty all based on producing things of value that humans appreciate.
You are more than welcome to not use the computer you are likely to be using for writing your comments.
But you won't because it's valuable to you, more valuable than the "depletion" of the resources that was used to make it.
So now take you and multiply by 7 billion people and you will see why we are choosing to keep creating and coming up with new resources.
Rainforests are marine biomass and ozone and ice caps are things we invent and not deplete?
How do you think we were able feed the amount of people we are doing today if it wasn't for our ability to transform things like dead animal goo into energy to power our machines which then again provide wealth which gives us time to do other things.
Standards of living globally are better than at any time in the past, yet in spite of the continued failed predictions of disaster people have been making for the past couple hundred years, people still persist in making such predictions. Willfully ignoring humanity's ability to adapt and overcome, that's the real nonsense.
You have to free people from drudgery and spend tons on their education, and provide them with a stable environment in which to work, and cultural encouragement for the parents to nourish children's curiosity.
Only then can you hope to generate ideas that surpass our already quite formidable body of knowledge, and it's still not guaranteed.
> yet in spite of the continued failed predictions of disaster people have been making for the past couple hundred years, people still persist in making such predictions.
They only have to be right once. On a geological time scale, a disaster is certainly inevitable. Not that I necessarily agree with doomsaying all the time. Population growth isn't the biggest issue we're facing.
We are the one species that might just have a chance if we don't succumb to the dystopian pessimist view that is a much bigger risk than anything else.
As for resource depletion, 3.5 vs 7 billion people doesn't make that much difference, both are more than earth can support naturally without us constantly finding new ways to obtain resources.
After all the largest extinctions we have caused so far were megafauna extinctions 10k years ago and we managed to do that with just a few millions of people.
I hear this a lot, in the context of, we must keep growing the global population on the off chance that someone may be born who comes up with a way to live on an over-populated, polluted, resource-depleted planet. It's nonsense.