[Loquebantur]

You are engaging in self-delusion here.

The point of these papers isn't to make precise predictions of "the day civilizational collapse occurs" nor does it merely "illustrate some complex relationships".

It is to show every closed system, even only remotely resembling our own, is bound to end in overshoot&collapse unless you change central tenets of the driving economic paradigm. Namely abandon exponential growth for a steady (or oscillatory) state approach.

Individuals aren't helpless bystanders either. As adults in a democracy, it isn't only your right but your responsibility to bring about the necessary change.

[lalaithion]

We don’t live in a closed system though.

[mempko]

Since we aren't able to export our pollution out into space, or mine food on mars, yes, we live in a closed system. We live on a round spaceship known as Spaceship Earth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth)

[Loquebantur]

Yes, we do.

For all practical purposes, earth's gravity well serves as a boundary for material resources at scale.

More importantly, the input of polluting material into earth's obviously very limited ecological system is limited. You simply cannot pollute as much as you want, so getting more stuff from the asteroid belt or whatever doesn't help.

[westcort]

Looks pretty closed to me: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/144427/all-of-you-o...

How many thousands of dollars does it cost to launch a kilogram of mass into orbit again? Out of orbit?

Do we even have a closed system that can support a small group of people indefinitely to launch? Unfortunately, we do not yet have such a system outside of the earth itself.

[bartimus]

That is assuming exponential growth inevitably leads to overshoot & collapse, which is a flawed zero-sum perspective. Growth (adding value) doesn't necessarily have to come at the cost of resources.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

You didn’t address that I already participate in democracy. I’m just realistic in my actual capacity to execute change, which is inherently largely local, so I focus on local change.

[peyton]

The whole point of voting in my country is to serve as a check on the legislature against using the government to do things to its citizens. The ballot box isn’t a tool for societal change.

A dictatorship is a much better system for changing society, if that’s your goal for government.

[xg15]

> The ballot box isn’t a tool for societal change.

Then what is?