[Newfie]

See, now THATS what we need, thinking outside the box!

Always a solution if you look hard enough.

[KaiserJeep]

As for the reasoning that says that "cities are the most efficient concentrations of people, where one can care for the most people with the least energy", I give that a big raspberry.

City dwellers starve first. You have only to look at the behavior of the English populace during WW2 to understand that the city dwellers lose and starve, while those who produce and possess the food prosper and fatten. You don't get any fairer than the English, which means you need to live close to the food production to have food.

The cities are doomed. They die soon after food rationing begins.

[Newfie]

"Mini Me"
"The plane, the plane"

And their girlfriends!

In bikinis.

15 billion.

Now it's stck in my head! A visual ear worm.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')I gotta laugh because I worry about how to survive while most everyone else casually revels in the uselessness – nay, the deservedness, of die off.

[Lore]

There is no rational to believe the 2 billion left in the future will be anymore sustainable then the several billion of the past, or for that matter a 100 million in the future beyond. Humans ruined their garden of Eden.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'W')E are in great need of a new religious paradigm to manage this deep deep contradiction between survival and welcoming the cleansing remedy of a die-off for the well being of both our species and our fellow flora and fauna.

[onlooker]

Yes our Garden of Eden has been ruined, the specter of Global Warming now hangs over this Earth and all living things on it. Barring any miraculous techo fix, the planet now seems destined to continue to warm for thousands of years not so long in geological time frames but certainly long in human time frames. So let us not kid ourselves civilization as we know it will be over soon, what will replace it who knows but it will be more primitive and it will involve dealing with a planet not so hospitable to life as we have known it. Now as for the survivors living sustainably they will not be able to do otherwise as they will be lacking in the Earth changing technology, fossil fuels, as well as the numbers to affect nature. Long term hard to say but again the planet will undergo some nasty changes that will make things difficult for humans.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'T')here is no rational to believe the 2 billion left in the future will be anymore sustainable then the several billion of the past, or for that matter a 100 million in the future beyond. Humans ruined their garden of Eden.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'W')E are in great need of a new religious paradigm to manage this deep deep contradiction between survival and welcoming the cleansing remedy of a die-off for the well being of both our species and our fellow flora and fauna.

[onlooker]

I cannot help but think that we have reached a point in our collective history where we are so tired and sick of our dismal history involving conflict-competition and pillaging and greed and that combined with our existential crisis that we are now arriving at will lead what remains of humanity into the future with a completely different mindset than most people throughout history. The essence of humans going forward will be in their pursuit of an ethos involving harmony with each other and with nature and unity with each other and nature for it will be recognized universally as the only way to proceed forward. Now if that can be deemed a religion then that surely is worthy of replacing any that has existed before.

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lore', 'T')here is no rational to believe the 2 billion left in the future will be anymore sustainable then the several billion of the past, or for that matter a 100 million in the future beyond. Humans ruined their garden of Eden.

[KaiserJeep]

War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death were afoot during the Dark Ages. Of those cannibal days, we remember only "fairy tales". The nature of mankind is not changed by any amount of hardship - tough times only serve to reinforce instinctive behaviors. This means that after the die-off, if any humans remain, we will repeat the same destructive behaviors, and trash the partially recovered world again.

The world is only humanity's creche. We are destined to inhabit free space when our childhood ends. The Earth's destiny is to end up as an evil smelling and mostly sterile trash heap, littered with human bones.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('onlooker', 'I') cannot help but think that we have reached a point in our collective history where we are so tired and sick of our dismal history involving conflict-competition and pillaging and greed and that combined with our existential crisis that we are now arriving at will lead what remains of humanity into the future with a completely different mindset than most people throughout history. The essence of humans going forward will be in their pursuit of an ethos involving harmony with each other and with nature and unity with each other and nature for it will be recognized universally as the only way to proceed forward.

[Lore]

There will be no partial recovery of our environment with a decreased world population. We have already set in motion many thousands of years of change that will remove most life on the planet from the cradle in which it was raised.

And for most of mankind the only free space it will see within the next thousand years will be that of the infinite void beyond life.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'T')o assume that our spiritual values will remain unmoved by the existential consequences we will suffer is totally illogical.

[Lore]

Religion is the sentient beings crutch. Of all living species, humans die the least gracefully.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', ' ')Science and secular society has not been very good when it comes to existential questions.

[Lore]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')If those 2 billion saw the cataclysmic death of the 5 billion there is at least the possibility that bearing witness to this could instill in the survivors taboos and commandments against over population and consumption.