If you didn't think we were in the end-stages of population growth and decline, just know that in your standard organic chemistry textbook given to students in university, it says that there are over 500,000 unregulated chemicals in industrial use. Exponential growth and technology with an evolutionary preference toward short-sighted and near-future decision making are going to cull the human race down by a large % as peoples systems are not evolved to tolerate the extensive environmental changes. The largest culprits are changes to food chemistry (prioritizing addiction mechanisms for profit over health), air pollution (prioritizing transportation and other means to maintain and grow economically), chemical exposures in the environment (multifactorial), and internet technology (prioritizing addiction mechanisms for profit over social health and function) [in my opinion]. People will get weaker, sicker, and dumber. Chronic diseases will start sooner, fertility will decrease, and population growth will reverse. The humans to survive out the other side will be children of health-conscious wealthy and those that live in less toxic environments globally.

It's really sad because it doesn't seem like there's anything any individual can do about it. I think these issues are honestly far more serious than global warming. They are causing serious problems RIGHT NOW everywhere. I think within the next 20 years even we're going to see many consequences related to these issues. I'd like to believe we can bioscience our way through this mess but I really think that won't be the case.

Fundamentally, I think proactive decision making takes a lot of time, energy, and work both on the individual and collective scales. I think it almost boils down to a physics problem where that just ends up being overtaken by the negative trend caused by exponential growth + the environmental equivalent of technical debt.