[NovaVeles]

Sorry this may seem a little snarky but - "They will think of something" - the universal band-aid for I want it to be true but I rationally don't know how.

When ever I hear that, the optimist in me wants it to be true. The pessimist thinks otherwise and nowadays the pessimist usually wins.

We will have hotels in orbit by the 1970's - they will think of something! That was a legitimate thing that the Hiltons proposed back in the 1960's.

[AlexanderTheGr8]

I used "they will think of something" as a all-encapsulating solution for what humanity will do in the next century. Predicting the next 10 yrs is almost impossible, let alone the next century.

Your example of hotels in orbit is an incorrect example. If humanity wanted to build a hotel in orbit, we would have a hotel in space (we already have a crappy hotel - ISS). I don't consider Hilton's incompetence to represent humanity's incompetence.

[NovaVeles]

I don't want to defend the Hiltons but that is just one example of something that was very common during that time period. In the 50's/60's - the idea that we would not solve the fundamental issues of the era over the coming decades would have been laughable.

When it comes to material shortages, fusion power, limits of computer chip scaling, global warming, over fishing, plastic waste, hyper effective battery storage, nuclear deescalation etc... have all been answered a lot with - they will think of something. Yes, there have been improvements but with most of these things, we have also missed the mark by a long shot. And decades later, we haven't. Sometimes it is right, look at what we did with CFC's. But it is by no means something I would hitch my wagon to.

John Michael Greer calls phrases like these 'Thought-stoppers' Little saying that we have that mean we don't have to face the ugly truth of something or are just trying to be a little too optimistic about the future in the face of hard times. "Housing prices only go up", "They will think of something", "Stock prices only go up", "It is different this time", "The fundamentals don't matter any more" etc.