I think the issue is that natural resources are limited, and even virtual things still require real energy. Online spaces are hosted on physical servers, machine learning uses real CPU computing power, and so on. And we’re increasingly using more and more energy and natural resources to facilitate our civilization.
Arguably, we’ve already fucked the climate and the biosphere. We’re literally in a middle of a mass extinction right now, and the climate is breaking down in front of our eyes. It’s entirely possible that we’ve already kicked off feedback loops, such as methane burp, that are beyond our ability to control. As you say, the growth will likely continue until we start seeing very rapid collapse as we hit the limits of our biosphere.
Yes, natural resources are limited, but that doesn’t mean that capital is limited. What I mean is that: yes, we’re using more energy as a civilization, but thanks to the investment of capital, we’re also expanding our ability to produce more energy at the same time. And “how much energy our civilization is capable of producing” can increase infinitely.
Yeah, the problem of pollution is certainly an existential threat. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the type of threat is “we’re running out of resources”. We’re not running out of anything, we’re just producing too much atmospheric carbon!
My point is that any meaningful capital is directly tied to resource usage. Our ability to produce energy directly depends on our ability to mine resources to build power plants and maintain them. Saying that we can increase energy production infinitely is reductive beyond any meaning, it’s like a physics problem about a perfectly spherical cow.
And yes we absolutely are running out of easily accessible resources that have sustained the current growth. Getting further resources is becoming increasingly more difficult and energy intensive. We’re also running out of things like fertilizer, dealing with topsoil erosion, and increasingly unstable climate that’s threatening our food production. I don’t think people appreciate just how fragile our whole civilization is.
I think the issue is that natural resources are limited, and even virtual things still require real energy. Online spaces are hosted on physical servers, machine learning uses real CPU computing power, and so on. And we’re increasingly using more and more energy and natural resources to facilitate our civilization.
Arguably, we’ve already fucked the climate and the biosphere. We’re literally in a middle of a mass extinction right now, and the climate is breaking down in front of our eyes. It’s entirely possible that we’ve already kicked off feedback loops, such as methane burp, that are beyond our ability to control. As you say, the growth will likely continue until we start seeing very rapid collapse as we hit the limits of our biosphere.
Yes, natural resources are limited, but that doesn’t mean that capital is limited. What I mean is that: yes, we’re using more energy as a civilization, but thanks to the investment of capital, we’re also expanding our ability to produce more energy at the same time. And “how much energy our civilization is capable of producing” can increase infinitely.
Yeah, the problem of pollution is certainly an existential threat. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that the type of threat is “we’re running out of resources”. We’re not running out of anything, we’re just producing too much atmospheric carbon!
My point is that any meaningful capital is directly tied to resource usage. Our ability to produce energy directly depends on our ability to mine resources to build power plants and maintain them. Saying that we can increase energy production infinitely is reductive beyond any meaning, it’s like a physics problem about a perfectly spherical cow.
And yes we absolutely are running out of easily accessible resources that have sustained the current growth. Getting further resources is becoming increasingly more difficult and energy intensive. We’re also running out of things like fertilizer, dealing with topsoil erosion, and increasingly unstable climate that’s threatening our food production. I don’t think people appreciate just how fragile our whole civilization is.