Humans have solved many seemingly intractable problems related to economic growth on the local and national level, such as smog, acid rain and the pollution of water sources. And at least have indefinitely delayed many man-made problems on the global level, like a thermonuclear war and racially-defined empires.
Will we have to adapt and possibly vacate large parts of the world? Yes. Will we have to look into hydroponics for seafood and other luxuries we have today? Possibly. But let's not give up hope. Negativity can lead to lack of action and there are millions, if not billions of lives at stake, and those of endangered species or large mammals for those who think there are already too many humans on this planet already. Canada, Alaska and land in developed countries in northern climates are well-positioned for climate change relative to other parts of the world. Maybe we could look at protecting vast swathes of open land, such as the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge or parkland in the western United States. There's incremental things everyone can do that make a huge difference.
That's true, and I don't think the situation is technically hopeless. Human (& nature's) ingenuity & adaptability can go far.
But right now ignorance is a much starker risk than hopelessness. The vast majority of people in wealthy countries still have increasing consumption as their top priority. And people in poorer countries are aspirants to the same. This leads to the abyss. Much of our amazing ingenuity is directed towards trivia, consumer-training, warfare etc, and far from being widely challenged, this trend seems to be accelerating. It's hard to imagine us not falling into a series of wars for diminishing spoils as the physical systems we're embedded in collapse.
So as I said, I don't think the situation is technically hopeless. There's much we could do. I doubt we'll do it. But I'm absolutely certain we won't do it if most of our population maintains the dulled Panglossian-consumerist perspective.
> Will we have to adapt and possibly vacate large parts of the world?
Coming from a nation that specialises in imprisoning & torturing asylum-seekers, by the way, I must comment on this point. Hundreds of millions of people (mostly poor) live in these areas that will need to be 'vacated'. Do you think they will be welcomed? Where? And when they are not, that peace will be possible? And that we can deal with these huge global challenges while simultaneously fighting the inevitable wars?
Unlikely. Humans are always adverse to strange cultures and people. For sure, it's going to be tough. Tough for people who crave stability and status quo, and much tougher for those who have to leave their homes and communities where they grew up and face hostile regimes.
Can we please stop thinking of anti-immigration attitudes of just being racist and fear of culture ? Here's the reason why old-style socialists were anti-immigration:
1) labor is the source of income of pretty much everyone. But mostly for the poor.
2) labor is a market. This means that every immigrant that comes and works here lowers the rewards for labor. Since they don't generally come with high training, this cost is pretty much exclusively borne by the poor.
This has gotten much worse over time. Specifically, there is this thing called "secular stagnation" and while there's many ways to describe it, one way is this : total labor demand in society was growing until the early 80s, and since then it's been between constant and slowly dropping, depending on economic conditions. There are actually slightly less jobs today than in 1980, and the population has kept increasing, and exactly what you'd expect to happen has happened : everybody who depends on "generic" labor is now worse off.
Socialists added to this that outlawing immigration in fact puts much more pressure on bad regimes by creating a pool of unhappy people in their countries that of course can destabilize their regimes. So an anti-immigration attitude everywhere would in fact put serious pressure on bad regimes to improve.
So let's please stop putting this culture shock/racism forward as the only reason to be anti-immigration. If I had to quantify, I'd say that this is the main reason for no more than 15% or so of people with anti-immigration attitudes. Most poor are anti-immigration because whilst they cannot articulate the economic consequences of immigration very well, they can directly feel them in their own lives.
Will we have to adapt and possibly vacate large parts of the world? Yes. Will we have to look into hydroponics for seafood and other luxuries we have today? Possibly. But let's not give up hope. Negativity can lead to lack of action and there are millions, if not billions of lives at stake, and those of endangered species or large mammals for those who think there are already too many humans on this planet already. Canada, Alaska and land in developed countries in northern climates are well-positioned for climate change relative to other parts of the world. Maybe we could look at protecting vast swathes of open land, such as the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge or parkland in the western United States. There's incremental things everyone can do that make a huge difference.