We probably could in the next 100 years through automation, massive reduction in population, and making things to last instead of making things to be replaced. Building a society whose values aren't based around never-ending growth.

We won't, but we could.

If you don't have population growth you still need economic growth to provide upward mobility to people at the bottom. Without growth you have a zero-sum game which again can lead to war.

Ideally improvements in efficiency or a shift values/culture can create a world where we can have economic growth without increasing the burden on the planet.

OR you reset wealth upon death. You don't necessarily need unlimited growth if you prevent wealth from pooling at the top.

We are trending towards having a smaller population in 100 years.

EU Birth rate over time: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1251516/crude-birth-rate...

US Birth rate is 1.7 kids per female.

There are of course issues that a lot of the economy is predicated on growth, but again, I'm actually pretty optimistic that markets and humans are pretty resilient and adaptable given enough warning and time.

HA part of that could be easily solved if suicide weren't so stigmatized. If everyone could just agree that once you're past the age of 80, once you get to a point of being infirm you just take a magic pill and peace out on your own terms, we'd be far better off as a species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

From the article: "In a 1974 United Nations population conference in Bucharest, Karan Singh, a former minister of population in India, illustrated this trend by stating 'Development is the best contraceptive.'"

It's pretty clear that the human population has grown beyond the ability of the planet to sustain a progression towards universal industrialization. Humans have nowhere else to live and we're eroding what underpins our ability to survive.

We more than tripled the human population in the last 100 years. In my own lifetime, the human population has grown by 42%. It's insanity to believe we can continue this without serious consequences.

Link to article: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/17/worlds-popu...

This has nothing to do with "hating that we exist", however, at a minimum we probably have a responsibility to study, discuss and understand our impacts on the Earth, and not just for what it means for other species, but for what it means for us.

pp remarkably off-topic and additionally self-defeating.

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLndueWMub3J...

I think we're going to have to make tradeoffs, and spending 20 years of resources on saving a small insect in one area probably isn't worth it.

> spending 20 years of resources

this overly-simple, too simple, example of one person and "the military" is not at all representative of say, the Bison and praries, or frogs and freshwater. And who are the most prolific polluters in the Federal Government, and who is famous for "20 years of resources wasted for no result" .. ?

Its just as abrasive to hear this pre-baked conclusion, as for others to hear the actual truth of say, entire regions of coral going extinct.

Shift your view up a couple levels of abstraction and everything on the planet is ultimately meaningless. People always seem to argue about "saving the planet" as though it has some greater meaning, when in reality it is just a poor proxy for "keep the planet inhabitable for humans".

I thought you were trying to speak for the insect kingdom here for a moment.

But sometimes I get the sense that people say things like this as a way to derail the conversation. They'd rather talk about other people's motives and beliefs than the the actual observation about the environment.

And we know those people are out there. Some of them get paid a lot to do it.

Given that it required us thousands of years to develop a scientific mindset to even be able to comprehend the scope of our own destruction, I can't see how we could have stopped ourselves any sooner.

The recent uptick in energy consumption is now magnifying the problem at an exponential rate, but it doesn't sound agreeable or practical to prevent people from spreading around to consume all the resources we have, or to smack the newly invented, frivolous and energy-draining devices from their inventors' hands the moment they've been first actualized.