[account_b]

As far as I know, the Earth's surface cannot meet humanity's current need for hydrocarbons, polymers or building materials. Biomass production is limited by sun energy and most importantly phosphorus and nitrogen cycles. Even hundred of years ago, people were already exhausting regenerative capacities and back then there were only around half a billion humans living on all this planet. Petrol chemistry and mineral exploitation saved Earth's ecosphere short term. But obviously that can't last forever.

It's nice to have functional carbon sinks and all, but we will never replace even the majority of petrol, metallic and mineral based production of today with biomass derived alternatives. The surface and geological cycles cannot support that. And food is priority. If phosphorus rock is gone, we're fucked for good.

We need to cut down.

[engineer_22]

->We need to cut down.

A potential alternative survival strategy is to develop your country as fast as possible. Develop whatever technology will be necessary to win a potential future war fought over the scarcest resources. This development oriented strategy will probably consume a lot of resources, but survival is worth taking risks for.

[jnmandal]

This is pretty clear to me too. We survive on stored energy borrowed from the past. Energy and growth are basically finite. We do need to cut down.

We also need to develop tech (weather technique or technology) to reconstitute waste and refuse into the inputs for our food, buildings, transportation, etc.

[account_b]

> We survive on stored energy borrowed from the past.

It's worse than that: We fully rely on borrowed time!

Natural geological cycles to restore surface phosphorus span many thousands of years. Our current agriculture (food production) critically depends on mineral phosphorus, which may be exhausted in just four or five decades. And we retain none of that, but flush our soils into the oceans (partially through the toilet, literally). No phosphorus, no food. I wish everybody knew about peak phosphorus. (It's also a geopolitical near future issue as almost all phosphate rock is located in Morocco...)

> We also need to develop tech (weather technique or technology) to reconstitute waste and refuse into the inputs for our food, buildings, transportation, etc.

Yes! We also need to collect and recycle human and livestock feces and urine to prevent mineral loss. Those cannot leak from the ecosystems anymore - madness!

Honestly, I think it's possible humanity will barely not make it, comically, because no one wants to lobby for collecting people's shit, while everything else goes full Star Trek.

[vimy]

We need to mine in space.

[jandrese]

Good luck finding an oil rich asteroid. Or an asteroid with lush virgin hardwood forests.

As far as I know there isn't a shortage of iron ore. This hardened wood is solving a problem that we don't have yet.

[goohle]

First, we need to marsoform Terra to make mining in space cheaper than mining at Earth.

[bhhaskin]

This. If we want to continue human progress then space is really the only option.

[dirtyid]

Do you have any recommended readings or search terms to explore this subject?