Past performance is no guarantee for future results. Other civilizations have failed in the past for mismanaging resources.
Your argument optimistically assumes that we'll be able to cope with the environmental changes that our activity is causing. Supply is only one part of the equation. For example, our CO_2 emissions, whether or not they cause global warming (that's mostly controversial in the US AFAIK), are causing ocean acidification, which could have a massive impact on marine life.
In dynamic systems as complex as the earth, tipping points are impossible to predict. That being said, we've never been pushing as hard for one.
Regarding growth, I have a hard time understanding how an exponential growth of our activity can be sustainable, especially in terms of energy requirements, which should be proportional (AFAIK). I believe that the current system is tautological. We need growth to sustain growth, but it hardly benefits people anymore. Wealth and happiness are related up to a point we reached in western countries in the 1960's IIRC. And after the last downturn, the economy restarted, but it didn't bring the jobs back.
I hope that there are alternative economic models. That's why I was talking about the prisoner's dilemma. I think that we're stuck on a bandwagon in a headlong rush.
I know that I'm very pessimistic about this, but I'm genuinely concerned. I can only hope I'm wrong.
Wealth and happiness are related up to a point we reached in western countries in the 1960's IIRC.
I think you're confusing absolute well-being with emotional satisfaction. The latter is often relative: Humans judge themselves in comparison to others, and are often happiest when they perceive themselves to be at the top of the pile. No amount of wealth is likely to change that. As our more "basic" needs of food, health and shelter are increasingly easy to acquire, yes, we'll focus more on that kind of emotional satisfaction.
But again, it's a relative phenomenon. If you think you'd be just as happy after being transported to the 1960's as you are today, I think you're fooling yourself. You'd miss all sort of features of the present day that our massively greater wealth has facilitated (and you'd miss a few years of life expectancy, too). Your absolute well-being is almost certainly much higher, and while that might not lead to emotional satisfaction, it's certainly worth pursuing. Better to be Socrates dissatisfied...
Objective well-being is an oxymoron. You can take all the objective indicators that you want, when it comes to happiness, subjectivity trumps them. Try to convinced someone undergoing depression that he's got everything to be happy...
> Better to be Socrates dissatisfied...
That quote refers to intellectual curiosity, not material wealth.
Your argument optimistically assumes that we'll be able to cope with the environmental changes that our activity is causing. Supply is only one part of the equation. For example, our CO_2 emissions, whether or not they cause global warming (that's mostly controversial in the US AFAIK), are causing ocean acidification, which could have a massive impact on marine life.
In dynamic systems as complex as the earth, tipping points are impossible to predict. That being said, we've never been pushing as hard for one.
Regarding growth, I have a hard time understanding how an exponential growth of our activity can be sustainable, especially in terms of energy requirements, which should be proportional (AFAIK). I believe that the current system is tautological. We need growth to sustain growth, but it hardly benefits people anymore. Wealth and happiness are related up to a point we reached in western countries in the 1960's IIRC. And after the last downturn, the economy restarted, but it didn't bring the jobs back.
I hope that there are alternative economic models. That's why I was talking about the prisoner's dilemma. I think that we're stuck on a bandwagon in a headlong rush.
I know that I'm very pessimistic about this, but I'm genuinely concerned. I can only hope I'm wrong.