Look, I&#x27;m no fan of what we&#x27;re doing to the environment, but none of the problems you bring up would actually result in a <i>need</i> to scale back consumption (as in a physical inability to continue). Wood is one building material among many. Extinct species and overfished oceans don&#x27;t impede our ability to raise animals for consumption (which is where a vast majority of the meat we consume comes from). Ditto farming. Pollution can be (is) filtered from water sources at miniscule cost. Energy production is cheap and diversified, even beyond fossil fuels (nuclear and increasingly practical wind&amp;solar). Water can be desalinated and pumped long distances for a pittance (I&#x27;m speaking in absolute terms here.)<p>Costs might fluctuate a bit, we might take the usual tragedies of the commons to horrible extremes that significantly mess with the planet and make it significantly less nice to live on, but I have yet to see an argument for unsustainability that didn&#x27;t rely on either silly extrapolations or silly assumptions about our inability to adapt. If you&#x27;ve actually got one I&#x27;d love to see it -- more ammunition in the fight for the environment -- but I have to say I&#x27;ve seen a lot of <i>bad</i> arguments along these lines and by this point I honestly expect more of the same.