Continuous growth is necessary to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If there cannot be continuous growth, who becomes the arbiter of human potential? People who call growth cancer? You can't be serious.
Who should decide how rich people can get AND how much growth can happen? Seems like you're just changing masters.
We're constantly finding gigantic reserves of resources. We are closer to being able to synthesize all the resources we want or need than we are to inflexibly running out of them.
Why do you think this will suddenly change, without precedent? There is no reliable science behind 'cooking the planet beyond livability'. We already have adaptations (carbon extraction) for that even if it were true.
Sudden change, without precedent... sounds like a black swan event, which ironically we have a term for. But there is precedent. Many civilizations before us have collapsed due to lack of resources, or mismanagement, or expanding so much they became unmanageable; this would just be the first time a globally connected civilization did so.
Exponential growth tends to become sigmoidal the further out you look, so you're taking it on faith that human history is the exception to the rule. You are convinced we are at the knee of an exponential curve and I am convinced we've already flattened into sigmoid.
I'm not handwaving away anything; i'm admiring billions of years of clear precedent.
You're handwaving away all of that precedent based on extreme pessimism and alarmism that has no basis in any evidence to date. Simply because climate change exists doesnt mean its the most extreme version cooked up by a crackpot journalist.
I can just as easily say you're handwaving away the pessimism based on precedent. Precedent holds, right up until it doesn't.
No, it means there are always adaptations. I defined what it means.
The precedent is what has evidence. Your pessimism doesn't have evidence to support inhabitable conditions within a few decades unless we initiate an authoritarian world government to control all growth and control the climate. The burden of proof is on you, not me.
I'm assuming you meant uninhabitable conditions. And that you're putting words in my mouth.
There's an alternative way. A simpler life. The term for it is called equilibrium. It's not a bad way of life.
It's very hollywoody but essentially the movie Avatar is sort of a window the essential nature of what a life of equilibrium is.
If someone comes up with a new technology that will give us the ability to colonize the galaxy, or quantum teleport, or have years long battery life, should it be thrown away for being too disruptive to the 'equilibrium'?
It's a matter of perspective.
If one sees one's own growth as an axiomatic good, then of course equilibrium will look like stagnation and the first step to death.
If, instead, one sees oneself as one part of a greater whole, all of which deserves consideration and has a place, equilibrium starts to look like a natural goal and a place of respect for everyone.
And your argument that we would throw away new technologies because they disrupt an equilibrium is a strawman; no one is suggesting that. "Technological progress" and "unconstrained growth" are not synonymous.
Let me turn this around on you and ask you this:
What is the ultimate goal of your unending growth?
Controlling all growth in order to live in peace is an idea that is 100+ years old. Mackinder(widely regarded as the founder of geopolitics, was the director of LSE) wrote about it. It was his vision to foster the league of nations. By the end of his work describing such he goes down to limiting the freedom of individuals quite significantly. He was the seed for groups like the World Economic Forum and the current international bodies such as the WTO, WHO, UN, etc.
I'm not sure you realize the measures that would have to be taken down to the individual level to control all growth. Life would be unrecognizable compared to what it is today. Oh, and no one would be allowed to exist outside the system. It would only be possible in a highly authoritarian world government.
Answer to your question: Colonizing the galaxy and eternal progression of welfare for humanity.
If cancer stagnates though... That's typically a good thing.
All the technologies you mentioned are kinda far flung and/or roughly orthogonal to the issue at hand: resource consumption as the result of growth. Humanity should 100 percent be mindful of resource consumption in such a way that they don't burn out all available resources.
So to put it bluntly these are your choices using your words: you can grow uncontrollably until you die like cancer or you can stay in "stagnation" forever and live.
The choice is quite obvious.
I'm not seeing anything on or beyond the horizon that we cannot adapt to and continue course. Can you cite specific examples?