Thinking technology will always save us is no different from divine or magical thinking.

Lots of societies and civilizations have collapsed. Some were straight up wiped off the earth and we don't even know what happened to them. Western civilization has had a good 500 years, and America has had a good 250 years, but that doesn't mean things can never go bad in the future.

Plenty of places have had catastrophic droughts, famines, and plagues. Nearly half of Europe died a few times from plagues. Most natives in America were absolutely wiped out from disease and other issues. Tens of millions died of famine in China last century. Tsunamis washed away and killed hundreds of thousands in Indonesia and Japan this current century.

In the past, the Krakatoa eruption messed with the climate around the world and made the sky dark. The Bronze Age Collapse is something we still don't understand but nearly wiped out everything in the western world. With population density higher than ever, disasters that match major historical ones would be far more destructive. It's really just been an unusually peaceful few decades in first world countries and people have gotten too comfortable.

  > "we are quite good at adaptation in the face of adversity."

I think what I worry about is large-scale migrations of people to 'better' areas and the problems that's going to cause.

So we can have 1 trillion people, 2 trillion, there's no upper limit?

Which is nice.

But important, useful things will still be burning and flooding, at huge cost to the economy. Which is less nice.

At this point I think we've tipped into a world of complete delusion, where imaginary "markets" are more important than keeping the planet comfortable, stable, and inhabitable.

Also. this, from that most volatile, irrational, and least sensible of all professions - the actuaries:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/economic...

This is the same logic that almost destroyed the financial system in 2008. "House prices always go up, and there is no reason to think this time will be different". Fine logic that works until it doesn't.

At best your logic works because people get concerned, and work to solve the problem. Once there is a critical mass of people unconcerned, like yourself, that think we will magically adapt and solve the problem, we're screwed.

? Have you opened a history book? The whole pre-WW2 situation was a malthusian trap. The colonial empires starved out whole continents on the periphery of their empires. Thats how japan and germany turned to hyper-imperialism in the first place.

And the solution of turning gas into fertilizer requires a free trade system to be reliable.

You can't live in places where your home is going to get destroyed every couple of decades by wildfires, floods, or hurricanes. There are more of these places now because of climate change and a lot of people are going to have to migrate over the next century, like huge global migrations. Insurance can't/won't allow a bunch of people to deny this reality any more (or at least much longer). LA is going to be pretty uninsurable unless the local governments do a lot to mitigate the fire risk.

It's always amazing and disappointing to see how many people actually believe that prices can be lowered by legislative fiat, or that "price gouging" is an actual thing that happens. I guess they would prefer to have shortages instead of paying market rates, and then complain about "greedy big business" or (my favorite) "late stage capitalism".