It leads to a smaller and poorer humanity, but not to the absence of humanity.
But each time we have to rebuild from a collapse, we have a degraded carrying capacity and fewer easily exploitable resources with which to rebuild. This becomes a existential risk if the cycle repeats so many times that we can no longer rebuild. Or if it keeps us stuck on one planet long enough for one of the other existential risks to get us.
Like I said somewhere else, overshoot is like AIDS—it doesn’t kill you, it just predisposes you to other problems that do.
At any rate, there’s always the selfish motive. I don’t want to have to waste time rebuilding even after one collapse because I might not live to see it to completion, and what I want even less is to already be cryosuspended when the next one happens because I won’t be revived and won’t be around to do anything about it.
Fair enough.
But each time we have to rebuild from a collapse, we have a degraded carrying capacity and fewer easily exploitable resources with which to rebuild. This becomes a existential risk if the cycle repeats so many times that we can no longer rebuild. Or if it keeps us stuck on one planet long enough for one of the other existential risks to get us.
Like I said somewhere else, overshoot is like AIDS—it doesn’t kill you, it just predisposes you to other problems that do.
At any rate, there’s always the selfish motive. I don’t want to have to waste time rebuilding even after one collapse because I might not live to see it to completion, and what I want even less is to already be cryosuspended when the next one happens because I won’t be revived and won’t be around to do anything about it.