The key two words above are "all but". We could be "all but" wiped out, I agree.Have you seen how people loose their minds when the Wi-Fi goes down? Imagine electronic banking goes down for 48 hours due to a power cut, or the internet falls over for a week.
Our way of life is so fragile and things such as climate change and energy shortages will absolutely change the way we as a species have to live. If you couple that change with another global pandemic or other catastrophic event then there is potential for humans to be all but wiped out not too long (in relative terms) in to the future.
Your assumption is that worldwide population will continue to grown incessantly. But this is far from inevitable, in fact it's not even likely. Many experts (perhaps most, it's not an area I follow closely) believe that the worldwide population will cap out at about 11 billion.Naturally, this could easily happen.
For every action there is a natural reaction. When the first bacteria grew, their numbers will have got unsustainable and other kinds of bacteria evolved that fed on the original bacteria. When plants grew, aphids evolved to feed on them, then predictors came to feed on them, and them, and them...
Up in Scotland, we can hunt and kill wild deer because the particular part of Scotland their habitat lies is small, and if their numbers grow too large they can either eat too much of their grasses and start to starve to death because of a lack of food or their numbers and small territory means that disease spreads and they die. To stop either of these things happening we have intervened and started keeping their numbers in check.
With humans, there isn’t another species keeping our numbers in check, and we aren’t doing it ourselves. Eventually, there will be a natural reaction from the planet where we can’t sustain the food needed to feed everyone and there could be mass starvation; or mass starvation due to plants stopping growing or becoming toxic due to climate change. Or the seas could lose their currents due to the increase in non-saline water melting into it, and the knock-on effects of that would be devastating.
Also a natural reaction to being too many of us and us living too close to wildlife that we shouldn’t be, could be that a real pandemic could wipe billions of us out. Something with a long incubation period that is widely spread and kills after a few weeks could easily pop up some day soon! There have been over 60 potential pandemic events since the turn of the Century. Nearly all of them have not become pandemics, but this Coronavirus has. Thankfully, it’s not been a serious one. It’s had a long incubation period and is widely spread but it’s not particularly deadly. But one day, maybe in our lifetime, something really bad could happen.
Look at what happens to viruses and pandemics themselves:
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There is always a sharp rise and a peak and a sharp decline. Then look at the correlation between those and human population growth. We’re still on the rise, but we are acting like a virus to the planet and eventually there will be a natural reaction to see humans peak and then decline.
The only thing that will stop it is if we stop acting like a virus.
Everywhere that humans have been on the planet, going back tens of thousands of years, we have wiped out or started to wipe out the megafauna of that area. Of the all the megafauna that have ever lived while humans have been around, humans have made 60% of them extinct and have put nearly all the rest on the endangered species list. If you look at the human population as a megafauna, there’s only one way we head when you look at the trend of all the others.
Shale gas though, which comes with its own environmental issues.China burns 6 times as much coal as the US, and it's not fair to say that the US is ignoring the problem. Although they had a climate change denying idiot in charge for the last 4 years who actively wanted to burn more fossil fuels, the reality is that the states took the lead and coal consumption went down nearly 40% during his tenure due to the growth of renewables and gas production (which is far less damaging than coal). The US is heading in the right direction and now that they've got someone who's not a complete idiot in charge this should improve further. On the other hand in China, although the use of renewables is increasing fast, so is the burning of coal, and until that gets resolved we're all on a slippery slope.
Yes.Is the world coming to an end
Bloody COVID, can't even kill off enough people.And even if I did completely change to a Green life, what good is one man doing it when the UK population grew by ~350,000 last year despite an excess deaths of 15% on top of the usual ~650,000 deaths we usually have a year. So despite some people going Green, despite Covid killing 100,000+ people, we are still 350,000 people up on this time a year ago. That’s 350,000 more carbon footprints. And globally, despite a global pandemic, the net population growth in 2020 was ~82,000,000. That’s the entire population of Germany more in the world, an entire country’s carbon footprint extra in a year, and what about the years before that and the years ahead? And what are govts doing about this unsustainable population growth and unsustainable way we treat the planet?
What in 5 billion years when the sun dies? Before that, not a prayer. It's impossible.Yes.
1.5bn when it goes red giant.What in 5 billion years when the sun dies? Before that, not a prayer. It's impossible.
5 billion mate. We might have some 'istry by then.1.5bn when it goes red giant.
Be nice if we were still around to see it.
5 billion it dies, 1.5 bn it incinerates all mammalian life on earth.5 billion mate. We might have some 'istry by then.
Silly argument but you say it's 1.5 billion until it becomes a red giant mate. I don't know where you got your 1.5bn from, it's 5 billion.5 billion it dies, 1.5 bn it incinerates all mammalian life on earth.