Originally Posted by Van Rijn

I can't speak for Taks, but I suspect that you have a very different idea of what "sustainable society" means than I do. I'd be curious what you think it means? As we understand physics today, in the very long run nothing is sustainable: Eventually the sun will die, eventually the universe will cool. But humans don't operate on those time scales. From a resource standpoint, over human time scales, the one certain limit for the earth alone is that population can't increase forever. The rest is up for debate.

When I think "sustainable society" I am picturing a society that is essentially static, a socieity of limits, where technology and culture isn't changing in any significant way. That is not a utopia in my mind, but a dismal dead end. I hope that never happens. Instead, if humanity is to survive, I believe there will need to be many and changing cultures with ever changing technology, expanding into the solar system and eventually beyond. From a resource standpoint, such cultures could certainly be sustainable and more, but the societies would grow and decline and give way to other societies over time. There wouldn't be a monolithic "sustainable society."