cthulhu77;87412 said:
Massive emoticon use aside, I think that 50 years is too optomistic. Talking to the fishermen in the gulf of California, their reduction in numbers is staggering. Classic case of overharvesting an area, and then standing around going "what did I do?"
To be fair, it is not one generations fault, nor just a couple. Never the less, it is time to own up to the preceding thousands of years of civilization and start to make some massive changes. As I have said elsewhere, the population surge is largely to blame, and part of that comes from the idea of hoarding resources. The more children/followers/citizens that you have, the more human resources you have to produce excess, which allows you to make it though leaner times. Despite this policy though, the Catholic church is losing numbers of faithful and the US government is pissing a lot of people off for it. ( Perhaps this is a sign of some social maturity, although I don't give it very good odds.)
It is a relatively short-sited way of thinking though, because eventually it must come to a head. All of humanity is involved in a massive pyramid scheme and the rest of the planet is now part of it because of our supposed right to use the earth as we see fit. As with all financial pyramid schemes, it is bound to collapse, and the people at the bottom will be crushed.
And as it gets closer, more people will begin to hoard even more, thereby causing the crash to come faster and perhaps unnecessarily, not unlike the market crash before the depression. Instead of focusing on hoarding resources, we should begin to place more emphasis on hoarding ideas and abilities. The internet is great for this, but what happens when a worldwide disaster strikes and it can no longer be maintained?
Doomsday stuff for sure, but I believe that the only way to avoid it at this point is to acknowledge the danger and think about getting through it. And I believe that is why so many scientist are adamant about reporting these kinds of issues, because they have the imagination and understanding to realize what COULD happen. It may be a bit sensationalist at times, and the media surely makes it more so, but how else can you get the attention of enough people to make a difference? The straight truth is often ignored, so blowing it up a bit makes it more noticeable.
We must either embrace sustainability in our population or be aware that we are going to have to find more resources off of our planet. Science fiction is often browbeaten as hard literature, but the nature of the genre is to think of what may happen, and in many cases, predict or guide it to fruition. Star Trek communicator to cell phone is just one example, but numerous others are out there. Many stories involve cataclism and riuned Earth, and the search for something new.