Even if it does not appear to be an imminent existential problem for our human race, the Earth's ecosystem is in the process of collaps...
The reason for this is that because of our role as predators and because of our intelligence, the ecosystem processes that would maintain its equilibrium cannot regulate human activity and its impact on the ecosystem that exists in our environment. We are continuously and increasingly consuming the Earth's resources needed to support human society without any feedback mechanism to maintain our balance with the environment. When we run out of one resource, we immediately look for and usually find another, and use it in the same way, without any equilibrium, using more and more resources as our knowledge and skills increase.
Although humanity evolved in a balanced ecosystem, it is no longer part of the biosphere's equilibrium because of human intelligence. However, there is a natural limit to the extensive and intensive growth of resources used by humanity, namely the limited capacity of the Earth to provide them.
Earth is the only reasonably suitable place for our existence in its present biological form. It is the Earth where our biology-based functional processes have evolved and where the resources to sustain these processes are present.
In order to sustain our progress on Earth, to sustain the growth of complexity created by human society, some form of balancing process must intervene to limit our exploitation of our environment.
The existence of processes for creating equilibrium is an obvious and necessary condition for the continued persistence of our development, but because of our predatory behaviour inherited from our evolutionary heritage, as human history clearly demonstrates, we are certainly not capable of consciously constructing and maintaining equilibrium processes that limit our activity. History shows that we have never been able to do so, and it would be naive to assume that we will ever be able to do so at the level of our human society.
If we cannot exist intentionally in equilibrium with our environment, then a naturally occurring equilibrium process, without the need for direct conscious planning, is required to create the equilibrium that limits our activity. However, this is under the influence of our intelligence.
In the end, nature always wins, but if we were to reach that final point, it could also mean the end of our humanity. Through our intelligence, we have been able to overcome the environmental barriers to our extensive and intensive development, until we finally hit an insurmountable wall on Earth of our perpetual growth as our inevitable destiny.
For our long-term survival, a process should prevail that limits our growth, one that does not limit our activities but rather motivates them, one that can still function as a negative feedback in the functioning of humanity's impact on the environment. However, only such a limiting equilibrium process, a negative feedback, could function that does not directly require our conscious action (which we would not be able to accept by our intelligence as a limitation on our social level), and our intelligent ability cannot hinder its operation, rather its created negative feedback is actually the indirect consequence of our intelligent behavior.
The sustainability of human development depends on the existence of such a balancing negative feedback process. Can such a process exist? Yes, and for the first time in human history, this negative feedback factor has already appeared and is present. It is the limitation of population growth as a function of the increase in the standard of living.
A generally recognized tendency in the existence of humankind is a decrease in the number of offspring as the standard of living increases. The natural tendency of a non-intelligent species governed by evolutionary processes is to produce more offspring under better living conditions. In the case of intelligent species, the relationship is typically reversed, as more difficult living conditions require more offspring to sustain life, while the progression of living standards beyond a certain level actually inhibits the production of more offspring because of the personally unsatisfactory sacrifices involved in the process of raising them.
The decrease in the number of offspring with the increase in the standard of living, a correlation that contradicts evolutionary principles, can only be a peculiarity of an intelligent species, and indirectly a consequence of intelligence, which can override the instinct of naturally evolved behavior.
This necessary level of living standards, which is required to become a limiting factor of population growth, has already been achieved by some existing human societies. If humanity proves to be intelligent enough to find the resources necessary for continuous development of living standards under the rapidly changing environmental conditions it has created, and to reach a standard of living at which the total number of human beings can begin to decline, then the negative feedback factor capable of functioning to limit our impact on the environment will be present to ensure the further, sustainable development of humanity.
And it seems that this state is not far away. It seems likely that within a hundred years, a decline in human population resulting from this correlation will begin, which can act as an explicit negative feedback factor in the increase of our use of natural resources, and whose occurrence is inevitably based on a behavior that does not require a deliberate conscious action that would be an unsustainable act as an intention to limit our extensive and intensive use of natural resources.
The only realistic way to ensure the sustainability of humanity's continued development is to improve and maintain the standard of living based on intelligent activity while the natural decline in population occurs, thereby achieving the appearance of the process of negative feedback, which is the necessary condition for the sustainable survival of humanity.
However, this also requires that the necessary resources remain available until humanity's population declines, and that humanity is able to find the necessary resources it needs to progress in a collapsing biosphere until the positive effect of population decline occurs, before human development is prevented by social collapse caused by resource depletion.
The prevalence of this condition is rather unpredictable, but our intelligence gives us hope of survival. Obviously, it is necessary to help societies that have not yet reached the level of development of the standard of living necessary to achieve the decline in population. This can be done in various ways, but it is a race against time to overcome the depletion of resources. For example, the absence of obstacles to migration is a positive factor in this process, despite the restrictive actions of populist politicians clinging to power. However, for migration to be seen as a positive factor, it is necessary that the population being integrated into the host society cooperates, even if this involves self-sacrifice and the application of enforcement rules.
It should be noted that this effect of the natural decline of the population does not lead to the limitation of the development of humanity, but, by reducing the extensive use of resources, it can prevent the collapse of society and, through our continuous increase in knowledge by the prolonged persistence of our existence, actually make it more possible for us to maintain development.
A sustainable future for humanity on Earth is a continuous development with a decreasing population, in which technological progress compensates for the reduction in the potential for action resulting from the decrease in human population. This type of development could provide an opportunity to reverse the extensive use of resources and ultimately allow for the regeneration of the biosphere while ensuring the survival of humanity.
It could also potentially preserve the possibility that human intelligence and consciousness, presumably no longer necessarily in its biological form tied to Earth, can also reach other worlds.
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