We're certainly setting a record at destroying this planet.
It's seems like a pedantic distinction, but it's important. Earth doesn't care if we're here or not. The universe doesn't care if we're here or not. We are the only ones who should care, and we seem not to.
The planet will be fine, eventually, after we die out. Life will continue after we're long gone.
But we'll be long gone, and it's like we've all decided that's okay.
Or measured by longevity, or leisure time, or other living standards, all of which are drastically higher than they were only a few generations ago?
Perhaps humans are better drivers than you think?
What saved us was the surprising phenomenon that those societies tend to have quite low birthrates. Multiple possible reasons for that:
* high cost of living and raising children,*
* availability of birth control,
* waning social pressure of getting many children,
* no immediate economic benefits of raising children (in agrarian societies, they are essentially free labor on the farm, and a huge young population makes it easier to bootstrap an industrial economy). Of course, eventually there will be a problem when a huge percentage of the population is too old to work.
We will be fine as long as we can sustain agriculture:
* oil must be a-plenty to run farming equipment. It will be a long time before electricity has taken over
* we need farmland with intact soil and water
* we need fertilizer (phosphorus is running low soon, and oil is required as well)
* we need pollinators for many crops. Hand-pollinating is expensive
* We must not run out of pesticides to maintain yields
And probably some more requirements. If any of them is not fulfilled, society collapses and things can get ugly quickly. These things partly contribute to recent wars in Africa, the Middle East, and other places.
Edit:
*: low child mortality makes it necessary to actually support most children all the way to adulthood
It's only surprising if you (like Malthus and Erlich) had the intellectual arrogance to believe you could predict the future.
I cannot predict humanity's future, but I can look at our past, and our progress looks excellent so far. Betting against our continued success seems to require serious mental gymnastics.
I know things are bad but historically, I don't know how you can say that. In the 60's, 70s, and 80's we actually were, no-bullshit, on the brink of turning the world into a radioactive glass hellscape.
Despite all the turmoil in the world, I think things are looking up for humanity.
Have you watched the news lately?
I think there was something war related and people arguing about first strike and red lines.
Just because we are now used to the threat, does not mean it went away.
The other significant problem with this punchline is that it is still heavily human centric. we are not gonna go away without a major fight in/against biosphere. and guess what since we dont ascribe any value to it other than how its useful to us its going to take the brunt of destruction. at this point if we hold our population & resource utilzation where we are and eventually settle down to a smaller size I'd be okay with it as long as we give the rest of biosphere a chance but we all know thats not going to happen. We need to keep growing, thats the system we are in. And sure there will be some targeted geoengineering & green energy hopium for us to hang our concerns on but at the end of day we'd end up in the same place.
there was a line I read somewhere that made me realize our current predicament, it goes -- if a distant civilization just looks at the rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas composition of the planet, they wont be able to tell if its a intelligent species consuming fossil fuels or a bacteria that just learnt metabolize fossils and just growing exponentially. its the same curve largely. So much for human discretion & intelligence.
/rant end.
In the grand scheme of things, I'm tempted to say: if that's the price to pay to expand beyond it, then so what? It's not like it's the only planet in the Universe.
But so far it is the only known planet with conditions where we can live.
And I doubt we can make the jump to another planet we first have to find and then somehow survive getting there - when we cannot take care of our own planet.
(Btw. no matter how much we mess up earth, it will allways be way more hospital than mars)