: : I can neither affirm nor deny (damn, I am sounding like a politician now) any of those facts. : I can provide references and data from reputable sources.
: : All I can say that if they are, indeed, true, than I would agree with your projection. I hope, however, that within those next 25 years we will have made great strides in technology and be able to mitigate those events.
: Why hope on a future invention; instead of doing something about it now?
: You can't predict the course of invention; merely lying back and saying "someone will work it all out somehow" is pure Pangloss. And continuing to consume ever-greater amounts whilst leaving the cleanup and hangover to the next generations is rather irresponsible, to say the least.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$You say Pangloss despite tons upon tons of evidence that show it's true. I've brought up a couple of simple examples in the past. Inventions will occur. You can look down your nose all you want, but inventions will occur that will change the way we live.
: Quite apart from all else, as SDF and myself have pointed out a number of times, the conversion from an oil-based to an alternative-based economy would require a significant one-off energy consumption; and every year we delay doing something about it, we reduce our capacity to shift our pattern of consumption.
: It's the classic Easter Island paradigm; the Polynesians landed there and sustained a comparatively advanced Polynesian civilisation by converting Easter Island's forests to farmland and consuming the wood to resources. However, as the population grew, the usage of wood far outstripped the regeneration the trees were capable of; until the forests were wiped out to sustain the island civilisation; at which point the islanders could no longer leave, since they built boats with wood; and there was no wood left to build boats with. And, as any geography student knows, the civilisation and the population then collapsed...
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$Yeah, I read that peice too. It didn't impress me in the least, not as a way of persuading me to believe that what you and SDF are talking about anyhow.
The Pueblo indians of the SW disappeared too, and they were surrounded by land. Ditto the Mayans, the Aztec, the Oltecs, probably lots of others. The Easter Island thing serves as good propaganda; "The sky is falling!"
: : What I am worried about is what kind of government the population would opt for. It could very well be a Stoller brand socialism, a laissez-faire capitalism, or, god-forbid, facism. When people are under duress they tend to make really poor decisions [Read Post-Versaille Germany].
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$LOL! When people are not under duress they make bad decisions.
: And when there aren't enough resources left to keep a civilisation going, it tends to collapse altogether. Bear in mind that, to have a large and monolithic society, you need a large amount of raw materials; we aren't even likely to have that in a worst-case scenario; the more likely case is a state of Balkanisation down to a township level and a population crash.
I can't say that the Left hasn't done it's part to bring about Balkanization here in the States.
