I think of it like this: fossil fuels were like the first-stage rocket for accelerating technological civilization. It was loud and wasteful, contained most of our fuel, and we burned it in a hurry to get halfway to orbit. The question is, what’s the second stage to orbit? Or are we just on a ballistic trajectory?

>I sometimes wonder if our level of technological advancement would even be possible without fossil fuels.

I don't. I'd say that fossil fuels were absolutely required.

Admittedly there was a ramp-up due to water-powered manufacturing and steam engines run by throwing in chunks of wood.

It does seem like much of society is predicated on burning things. I feel like we have an opportunity to change that paradigm should since the nuclear age began, but burning things is just so easy it makes us complacent

It seems to me that any system predicated on population levels over the pre-industrial standard are a sketchy proposition.

Even at the pre-industrial level, the environmental load has been high. Mediterranean goat deserts, death of large Pleistocene animals in the Americas, whale hunting. You could still have nuclear power, microelectronics, solar energy in a world with a whole lot less human meat roaming around on it.

In the pre-contraception era, the human population was almost by definition at the environmental limit; limited by starvation, disease, wars, and so on. Just as all wild creatures are.

Anti-contraceptionists are almost worse than climate change deniers.

Maybe we don't need contraception, we just need predators.