Modern society can never be made sustainable. The only level of sustainable that we can reach is a certain local optimal point where our destruction eventually decreases so that no more wild earth is lost and the human population is stable. Unfortunately, that local optimal point is far from good because it means thousands of species extinct and billions of human beings on the planet. The only reason why such a situation could become stable is if we eradicated enough life so that the remaining system is easier to keep stable. That is an unfortunate mutation and misappropriation of the word “sustainable”.
Thus, the version of sustainable so often promoted by mainstream environmentalists and leftists is insufficient. To them, as long as we can reach a point of equilibrium at some point in the future, that’s enough for them. Mainstream environmentalists are too mentally beaten to think outside this rubric and leftists are too seduced by the fact that billions of people could eventually reach some sort of pseudo-equality within the prison of an advanced technological society. Leftists only satisfy their own psychological urge to help the weak that they can’t fathom that they are just helping everyone become weak.
The raw truth is that even five billion people on this planet is not sustainable. Using even half the amount of electricity that we use today is not sustainable, regardless of whether that electricity comes from coal plants or solar farms. That’s because ultimately, five billion using half our electricity still means that those five billion will be consuming, and people won’t give that up. Because our entire society is built upon the tenet of consumption and technology, it can’t go on. It’s a lost cause. Of course, five billion would be a lot better than the 8.26 billion we have today.
I sincerely doubt that humanity can do anything to save itself. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, for even causes that appear lost may not be truly lost. But probably the most humane thing that could happen to us is that mother nature unleashes some natural disaster on us that wipes out key hubs of technological production so we have to revert a more simple way of life. Perhaps climate change will be the only thing that could really save the planet, since it might be like a fever that wipes out our civilization. Unfortunately, that might be increasingly less likely as the foolish technophiles consider seeding our atmosphere with particle clouds to block out the sun.
I often write about various aspects of civilization in the hope that a few will start to understand the seriousness of our situation. But if I’m being honest, I think our entire civilization was a huge mistake, and I wish evolution had not given us such intelligence so that we would never have had the chance to abuse it in the way we are.