Letters to the Editor
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It's interesting what it's hardest to imagine
I haven't read the book yet, but it sounds interesting. What's already interesting is to see what the most popular and least popular ways are to describe the potential results of overpopulation and overconsumption.
The most popular thing is to say that we are "endangering the Earth," implying that our environmental degradation could actually eliminate all life on the planet. As this book points out, that's really unlikely.
The second most popular thing seems to be to say we are "endangering our species," implying that all the billions of people, down to the last person, will die if we carry on with our polluting ways. This makes for an interesting thought experiment-- and I bet this book is a good read. But it also seems unlikely-- even in the worst imaginable disaster scenarios (nuclear winter, really bad global warming) won't there be a few ingenious and/or lucky people in some part of the world that is less affected, who survive? People are both numerous and crafty; somebody will make it.
Which brings us to the least popular, but most likely, result of severe environmental degradation: the fall of modern civilization, and its replacement by other cultures who would then see us primarily as the foolhardy architects of the largest die-off in human history.
Why is it harder to imagine this, than to imagine the end of the Earth itself?