A Synthesis of Man and Nature

Many people believed when I grew up that man was the master of nature and that mankind should conquer nature. However, this attitude I have found to be basically a suicidal process. Because as man conquers nature he tends in other ways to kill both himself and nature in almost infinite multiple ways.

So, for mankind to survive long term on this planet, it must cooperate with nature. This is a completely different approach to things but it is the only sustainable one for thousands and potentially millions of years here on earth.

One possible synthesis that could work for mankind that could allow somewhere between 10 billion and 14 billion people to live upon earth. There is no possible way to have more than that many people live on earth with present technologies in place.

With present technology, the only way to create quality lives for the humans presently living on earth is to mostly live underground. Because unless all good tillable land is available for growing food this amount of people cannot be sustained. So, if you look at core what is really happening right now on earth is that droughts and other factors regarding weather, price of fuel for transporting food, etc are affecting people being able to eat at all, especially in third world nations and this is likely to only get worse over the next years and decades as weather worsens as the poles melt.

Once the poles melt life on the equator WILL be impossible living above ground because there won't be enough electricity to run all the air conditioners to allow people to live in 150 degrees Fahrenheit during summers on the equator.

Since even if all carbon emissions stopped worldwide the temperature would still rise for several hundred years to 1000 years and since because of the permafrost melting in northern and southern regions it is liberating all or most of the carbon in the permafrost tundra into the atmosphere. So at this point temperature is going to go up no matter what humans do for about 1000 years.

So, the two real emergencies right now for humans are food and power generation. If we solve these two problems in cooperation with nature on earth humans will survive. If we don't solve these two problems most or all humans will not survive.