> By continuing the way we are, toward ever-increasing consumption of resources and ever-growing inequality, we are racing towards humanitarian disasters the likes of which have never been seen before.
We aren't doing that. Increasing human populations don't increase resource consumption because 1. resources aren't always consumed per-capita 2. we have the spare human capital to invent new cleaner technology.
It's backwards actually - decreasing populations, making for a deflating economy, encourage consumption rather than productivity investment. That's how so many countries managed to deforest themselves when wood fires were still state of the art.
Also, "resources are finite" isn't an argument against growth because if you don't grow /the resources are still finite/. So all you're saying is we're going to die someday. We know that.
> That's how so many countries managed to deforest themselves when wood fires were still state of the art.
It was mostly ship building that deforested eg the countries around the Mediterranean and Britain. Firewood was mostly harvested reasonably sustainably from managed areas like coppices in many places. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing
We aren't doing that. Increasing human populations don't increase resource consumption because 1. resources aren't always consumed per-capita 2. we have the spare human capital to invent new cleaner technology.
It's backwards actually - decreasing populations, making for a deflating economy, encourage consumption rather than productivity investment. That's how so many countries managed to deforest themselves when wood fires were still state of the art.
Also, "resources are finite" isn't an argument against growth because if you don't grow /the resources are still finite/. So all you're saying is we're going to die someday. We know that.