Very interesting. Which confirms my hypothesis that you (as many others) would prefer moving to a next target (planet, place), after having killed your host (Earth): this is exactly the behaviour of a virus.
How did you jump to the conclusion that I would like to see our ecosystem collapse? I'm as "green" as the next Retired Hippie in my consumption habits, and I do my best to support institutions that try to reduce our impact on the planet. The birth rate has been dropping steadily since the 1980s, and it's predicted that the population will level off before the end of this century--at a level that can still be fed (with proper ecological stewardship) from the enormous swaths of farmland on the more recently-settled continents.
Obviously our biggest environmental problem is greenhouse gases. Apparently there's a gigantic reservoir of CO2 in the glaciers and ice caps that are currently melting, so it's hard to predict the climate of the future. It will certainly support life, which means that a modest number of humans will be able to survive.
Generally speaking, seems like there is no intention of reverting our actions on Earth and adopting any lifestyle (Amish as an example) that would guarantee a sustainable life for the coming generations.
As I said, the birth rate of our species has been falling for 30 years.
Well gentlemen, being this a science forum, I am expecting much more elaborated and profund answers.
We all blow off steam once in a while. Personally I am utterly disgusted by the reverence toward the Amish. This is partly because a friend of mine married one of them and, to his horror, found out that the private Amish person is quite different from the public one. But my disgust is primarily not for the Amish themselves, but for our attitudes toward them. As I noted in my previous post, the Amish happily take advantage of the Post-Industrial civilization that literally surrounds them, making their lives enormously easier, more comfortable and more prosperous than they would ever be on an actual "Amish planet" where no one was allowed to
construct the tractors and electrical devices they use routinely.
... and how do you believe the iPhone/iPad you probably have in your hand is built? It feels quite nice to play with those devices at home, right? Well, an immense amount of Chinese people have to work the amount hours you mentioned above, in the conditions you mentioned above, so you can play with your device back in your living room.
China, for all intents and purposes, was still in the pre-industrial Iron Age at the end of WWII. You can't drag a civilization from the Iron Age through
three paradigm shifts--the Industrial Revolution, the Electronic Revolution, and the Digital Revolution (or whatever you want to call it)--in just two or three generations.
From the first stirrings of fossil-fuel-driven industrial technology (most notably railroads) at the end of the 18th century, through the invention of electronic communication (the first public telegraph) around 1830, and into the Computer Age (which I, who work in that field, identify as the IBM 360, the first 3rd-generation mainframe) in the late 1960s was a span of almost two centuries. And this happened in a country with enormous reserves of natural resources--because no civilization had existed here before us so there was an abundance of virgin topsoil, endless forests, clean water, game and wide-open spaces--not to mention the world's largest network of rivers for transportation. China in 1948 was a much different country than the USA at the end of our Revolution. I can illustrate that assertion with two words: population density.
The Chinese are still struggling to become a 21st-century economy. The national goal of reducing population growth is key to this, but it's a tough sell to a people who measure their wealth by counting their grandchildren.
The Chinese people do indeed work much harder than the average American, and for much less pay, but in the bargain they have plenty of food, better homes, good medical care, TV and the internet. In less than 70 years they've made about as much social and economic progress as any country did at the dawn of the Industrial Era. They're not going to try to accelerate this because they can see what happened to countries like Afghanistan (not to mention most of Africa) that already tried it.
The difference here (in my opinion) is that a lifestyle like Amish (taking them as example), even when they have to work that much to get what we easily get in a supermarket, is done for their own survival.
As I already noted, the Amish are dependent on the external economy. There would be no such external economy on an "Amish planet."
Probably more than 3/4 of people on Earth live in this Comfort Bubble, where life is so easy and comfortable, that almost none of us would leave it, if that would imply a much more sustainable place to live, for ALL of us, not just a few.
Uh... there is still a Third World where the vast majority of the population live in poverty, squalor and ignorance. This covers most of Africa, much of southern and central Asia, and quite a bit of Latin America. In fact it's so large and so close that most of us can't ignore it consistently, and many of us can't push it into the back of our minds for more than a week. Your "comfort bubble" is more fragile and much smaller than you seem to think. I can name entire countries in which only the ruling class feels comfortable.
As I've pointed out before, to those of us who were more-or-less grown-up a decade or two after the end of WWII, it is a gigantic shock to see
Germany and Austria taking in the Syrian refugees. Humanity is clearly developing a conscience.
Earth is in current state because we have exceeded our survival needs, producing an immense amount of goods not needed for survival (comfort bubble), while having finite planet resources.
And we have slowly come to realize this. The fact that modern comforts and recreations are primarily electronic and require very little use of non-renewable resources points to a future more in tune with the ecosystem. The attenuating population bubble carries the same promise.
Amish lifestyle on the other hand, is completely the opposite (while it does require more sacrifice to accomplish)
I don't know where you live, but here in northern Maryland we see Amish people all the time. They drive their gasoline-powered trucks down from Pennsylvania, full of metal sheds (that they built with their electric tools) which they sell to the non-Amish. They also sell their crops at our farmer's markets, at much higher prices than they could get back home.
Please cease your fraudulent diatribe about a people you apparently you know only from reading. They simply are
not like that.
