Is Industrial Civilization Sustainable?
Most people think that industrial civilization is sustainable because, well, humans are apparently the most important and most special organism on this planet. We are apparently the pinnacle of God's creations or evolution (depending on your religious perspective). There is no way we can mess up the Earth's climatic systems. There is no way humans can irreversibly destroy the planet's biosphere.
And technological "progress" hasn't necessarily improved the quality of life for people. Modern technology might have made life more convenient. Like how certain priveleged people can now order stuff online, and have stuff delivered to their homes. Or how we can travel half away across the world within 24 hours via modern airliners. And now, we can chat with people, living thousands of kilometers away, over the Internet. But the vast majority of people are now as brainwashed, narcissitic, racist, sexist, delusional, greedy, violent, irrational, etc as ever. So much for the Internet making people more "enlightened". The Internet has now become the most efficient tool ever to spread corporate propaganda and to brainwash people. Just look at the non-stop advertising and marketing propaganda everywhere on the Internet. Yet, the clueless, sheeple masses actually believe in these lies and BS.
Most importantly, it is widely believed that human are infinitely clever and adaptable. No matter how much we destroy the planet's biosphere via industrial activities, no matter how much plastic pollution we dump into the world's oceans, no matter how many billions of tons of greenhouse gas pollution humans spew into the atmosphere each and every year , etc mankind will always come up with an ingenious technofix to industrial civilization's problems.
Yes, most people believe that mankind will always invent new technologies to fix the problems caused by prior technologies. Most people believe that human population growth can continue for many more decades without any negative impacts on the natural world or ecosystems on this planet. Most people think that technology is always improving, and that the quality of life for humans is always improving, thanks to technological progress. Most people think that the Earth has infinite amounts of natural resources, and that we will never run out of natural resources to exploit.
These are all myths that the vast majority of people believe in.
In reality, technological "progress" is a myth. The abundant and cheap energy from fossil fuels is what allowed humans to exploit the natural resources (i.e rare Earth elements and the plethora of other mineral ores) necessary for creating advanced modern technologies (like computers, automobiles and smartphones). Without fossil fuels, all of modern technology--and thus industrial civilization--ceases to exist.
And the global human population is already unsustainable. There are now 8,000,000,000 people on this planet in 2022. The global human population is still growing by more than 200,000 people everyday (births minus deaths). The global human population bubble is the biggest bubble in human history, and it will eventually crash when industrial civilization permanently ceases to exist in another decade or two.
And contrary to popular belief, the Earth does not have an infinite amount of natural resources. This planet's overpopulated citizens are rapidly depleting all of the finite and nonrenewable resources (i.e. fossil fuels, metallic/mineral ores and top soil) ...such resources are necessary for sustaining industrial civilization. All these nonrenewable and finite resources are rapidly being depleted to nothing by the overpopulated citizens of this planet. And when these resources are so severely depleted that they can no longer be extracted, then industrial civilization collapses because it has literally run out of resources to chew up and spit out.
And the more people there are on the planet, the greater the negative impacts humans will have on the planet's ecosystems. Duh. The more people there are on this planet, the more resources will have to be extracted from the Earth, to sustain the global human population, thus increasing the amount of destruction of the planet's ecosystems. Yet, this simple reality people don't realize, or refuse to realize. Or deny. Global human population growth is the number one cause of planetary ecological destruction. Yet, human population growth continues to skyrocket, and the natural world continues to disappear under the insatiable resource appetites of our growing human population.
And technological "progress" hasn't necessarily improved the quality of life for people. Modern technology might have made life more convenient. Like how certain priveleged people can now order stuff online, and have stuff delivered to their homes. Or how we can travel half away across the world within 24 hours via modern airliners. And now, we can chat with people, living thousands of kilometers away, over the Internet. But the vast majority of people are now as brainwashed, narcissitic, racist, sexist, delusional, greedy, violent, irrational, etc as ever. So much for the Internet making people more "enlightened". The Internet has now become the most efficient tool ever to spread corporate propaganda and to brainwash people. Just look at the non-stop advertising and marketing propaganda everywhere on the Internet. Yet, the clueless, sheeple masses actually believe in these lies and BS.
So much for industrial civilization being "sustainable".
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