Just as communism cannot solve the problem of efficiently determining what amount of goods should be produced and how much they should cost, expecting genius leadership to solve problems of resource scarcity and climate change is also foolish.
We have very limited ability to plan ahead and modify behavior to prepare for a future that has so many variables as to be barely more predictable than a random guess.
Future problems will be solved/mitigated the way we solve all problems; through a mostly free economy, innovation, and some government regulation to protect the environment.
What are we going to do about the much more serious threat to humanity that is the impending ability to cheaply and anonymously wage acts of terrorism? This threat is mere decades away, not centuries. This generation will face the serious problem.
What are we going to do when antibiotics become entirely useless? It seems that may solve the population and resource depletion issues by itself. Before penicillin, most people died of infections, and that was just a few generations ago. The biggest threat in all human history has always been infectious disease, and we are living in a vanishingly small slice of time where that is not the case.
I promise that global warming will not be mentioned as among the top 10 problems endured by even our great, great, grandchildren.
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