The problem itself is technological, but do you believe the solution is (solely) technological?
Considering the technical aspect of the problem is well enough understood, if politics "can't" fix this, then what's plan B?
Largely yes. Technological solutions are definite and verifiable. Political solutions (behavioral coercion) is rarely so, you never know the adverse effects of pushing people to do X. Politics creates too much tension, too much expenditure of energy on things that have little effect, while technology multipliers can be huge. And they lose credibility easily because of the co-opting of environmental issues for political posturing (e.g. the twice-a-month-moving-to Strasbourg European Parliament declaring a climate emergency)
Whatever the solution ultimately is, it's surely going to need money, and lots of it, so how is this going to happen without public consensus?
Moreover, bioplastics, fusion and next-gen battery tech could mitigate world pollution if they become cheaper than "dirty" tech.
edit: since i'm getting downvoted for pointing out the obvious, here's links pointing out that overpopulation is a myth, even a racist one in some circumstances:
wapo: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-the...
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/fee.org/articles/the-myth-tha...
https://www.pop.org/debunking-the-myth-of-overpopulation/
https://www.globaljustice.org.uk/blog/2019/mar/9/how-racist-...
kurzgesagt: https://youtu.be/QsBT5EQt348
the guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/19/overpopulatio...
nytimes: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/opinion/overpopulation-is...
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/05/25/overpopulation-the-de...
The problem is one of contrast: e.g. there's nobody in deserts but people die everyday in overcrowded train stations in India. That's why people perceive "overpopulation" as a problem, but it has more to do with human inefficiency than the physics of our planet.
However GP's point about adaptation speed of our civilization to the changing ecosystem stands.
I sometimes wonder, between utopia and horror, how many people will have to die in the name of climate catastrophes for a global "survival instinct" to kick in at the highest level — like stability is a thing for the finance world, the military world, because we're so aware of how much these things may destroy or kill when derailed.
I'm pretty much convinced it's generational — boomers will never get to it, not enough of them; half of gen Xers might sway; but millenials (born 1982 and on) will enact the tipping point, politically and sociologically. So, that's 2030-2040 mechanically for that gen to become the dominant one (by then aged 50-60).
My question is, how many will climate kill or hurt deeply until then? Could the tipping point happen sooner due to catastrophes?
I don't know what's a reasonable fair estimate, here. Are we talking millions? tens, hundreds? a billion? How dire is the situation, really?
the only difference now is that we finally realised we're living on a planet that's not constant, but actually changing. this realisation is a positive in my book, as an extinction level event is always around the corner.
re. how many will die: the plague has been constantly killing humans for almost 1000 years now. and we're still here. yes, i'm an optimist.
My everlasting-optimism is only tempered by a somewhat keen awareness of that Fermi paradox thingy, a Darwinian observation that species just disappear and the world just keeps spinning.
I think the greatest invincible filter — one we just couldn't overcome — is the idea of a fatal flaw in our genetic make-up, or relatingly in the evolution of our environment, that we simply couldn't fix in time (it could be hidden, insiduous, e.g. increasingly more 'cancers' until we become born with it in majority).
In many instances, species do not entirely die from such evolutionary filters, a few survivors with just the right genes may appear and spread their immunity.
But in many instances, species just die at those filters. We still don't really know why Neanderthal disappeared, iirc there are clues pointing at a possible genetic flaw, combined with environmental pressure (sorta contra-variant doom scenario).
Which is why I think we should massively spend to solve as much of the "bio" stuff as we can, grab all low-hanging fruits now and buckle up to kick off major projects spanning generations. The value and security to be gained, in terms of ultimate survival and progress, is just too critical to miss or delay. IMHO. And it's likely to take all of tech with it, a poster-child client sector to buy and fund all manners of extravagantly awesome technology.
I'd be curious to know how your optimism shapes things in imagination, regarding our past and/or future. :)
and since you asked about the future, i want my "self" to be moved to a computer, set to sleep mode and then woken up once it reaches alpha centauri or something similarly far away. no body, no problems. right now that's pretty much the only way to discover anything light years away without our Earth-bound energy converter aka human body that comes with a billion dependencies and dramatically tiny life span.
but we're really discussing sci fi stuff. i hope that in the meantime the global warming fight will not drag the whole earth back a few hundred years instead of fixing by innovation.
I called this new species "energeans", functionally termed "Maxwell organisms" in a nod to the 19th century genius. Humans individuals become 'permanent, self-consistent' organized energy 'fields' of sorts (to preserve continuity, the sense of "self", as one's energy goes through machines (as electrons probably), space (as photons), etc.
It's totally whack physics as we speak outside some incredibly controlled lab, but it's fun to think about. :)
The Fermi paradox, I agree it's probably BS (but that's really just belief as we speak). I like to use it as a reminder of some "unknown known" (that we might not know, but others do), like
"civilization is possibly very, very hard";
or "we are so far away from big boys science that we grasp at space with tiny sticks like ants carry food, being silently observed by the equivalent of humans — so, so much above and beyond our very perception";
and my nagging favorite is a hypothesis that maybe, just maybe, what we think we "see" in space is really not what's actually out there — like Bohr's model of the atom with valency etc. was/is totally fine functionally (afaik we still do basic chemistry with it?), but not at all a "picture" of reality. Hence we'd be looking for caterpillars when all there is to see are butterflies — energeians? holo-trickery? nano-robotic swarms? blackhole farming? 5, 11, 23 dimensional space? And most being non-exclusive with others.
One thing seems sure to me: the most fundamental thing we might have right now is a quantum interpretation of Shannon's information theory, and going by that, there's a long way ahead of us until we reach "hard limits". It's crazy to think what this universe allows if you give it enough time and energy.
Here's to your last sentence being true. I must admit, I have confidence in the eventual resolution in a "decently near" future (~100 years at most), but I'm increasingly worried about the chaos/transition — if history is any indication, which it absolutely is imho, it's gonna cost too many lives and too much despair for too many people, whereas some will undoubtedly manage to turn the outcome to their advantage — even better off on the other side, like the "Great Heist of 1929", and it seems to me most majors periods of intense and prolonged chaos.