I mean for former, in terms of general economic wellbeing. It is a big deal and obviously bad if we can’t bring everyone up to a decent level of economic prosperity, but it is not fatal to civilisation. We are already at current levels of inequality, and we still have a civilisation.
The arguments for a possible collapse [I am on the fence] are roughly
1. Many civilizations in the past collapsed when deprived of their source of energy. A smooth transition to a lower level of energy use is not the norm though it has happened e.g. Byzantium.
2. Complex systems tend to be operating close to optimum, which makes for fragility. Turn the electricity off in NYC for two weeks and see what happens for example. More on this in books like “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph A. Tainter.
3. Our civilization is global thus the collapse would likely be global.
It is plausible to me that this would be fatal to our civilization, in the long run. Eventually we need to stop being biological humans living on the surface of Earth. It is not clear to me that we can move past that without much higher productivity than present day US.
I agree that if technological development productivity was held at a low level indefinitely that could be fatal, but that is a fairly different claim from the one waveman is making—which is that in the nearish term we will be unable to maintain our civilisation.
I am also hopeful that we can reach technological escape velocity with current or even fewer people with reasonable economic wellbeing.
I don’t really think you can make an argument that a renewable economy is viable based on hopium type arguments. As with the Club of Rome work, you would have to assume a massive increase in the rate of progress for this to work. In reality the problem seems to be the reverse—productivity increases seem to have slowed considerably.
I mean for former, in terms of general economic wellbeing. It is a big deal and obviously bad if we can’t bring everyone up to a decent level of economic prosperity, but it is not fatal to civilisation. We are already at current levels of inequality, and we still have a civilisation.
The arguments for a possible collapse [I am on the fence] are roughly
1. Many civilizations in the past collapsed when deprived of their source of energy. A smooth transition to a lower level of energy use is not the norm though it has happened e.g. Byzantium.
2. Complex systems tend to be operating close to optimum, which makes for fragility. Turn the electricity off in NYC for two weeks and see what happens for example. More on this in books like “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph A. Tainter.
3. Our civilization is global thus the collapse would likely be global.
It is plausible to me that this would be fatal to our civilization, in the long run. Eventually we need to stop being biological humans living on the surface of Earth. It is not clear to me that we can move past that without much higher productivity than present day US.
I agree that if technological development productivity was held at a low level indefinitely that could be fatal, but that is a fairly different claim from the one waveman is making—which is that in the nearish term we will be unable to maintain our civilisation.
I am also hopeful that we can reach technological escape velocity with current or even fewer people with reasonable economic wellbeing.
I don’t really think you can make an argument that a renewable economy is viable based on hopium type arguments. As with the Club of Rome work, you would have to assume a massive increase in the rate of progress for this to work. In reality the problem seems to be the reverse—productivity increases seem to have slowed considerably.
There is a whole discussion about this both in the popular press and among economists https://time.com/4464743/productivity-decline/ https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2017/number/1/article/the-global-productivity-slowdown-diagnosis-causes-and-remedies.html
It is one thing even to assume present rates of improvement will continue, it is another to assume a dramatic turnaround against the current trend.
I do not mean technological development productivity, I mean economic productivity (how much stuff we’re making, how many services we’re providing).