It's simple, we're very close to the penultimate generation in the Petri dish. That one has enough to eat (barely) and can find at least some places where the excrement hasn't piled up over their heads. The next one chokes on it while starving.

Sadly, unless we all stop breeding or the swine flu kills a lot more than just the "swines", that time is not far off.

That's about the size of it mikk.

I'm with the doomsayers on this one.

We've had a good run, in the cosmological scheme of things.

There has clearly never been any guarantee associated with any life form that has ever evolved on our planet, but in our case there are additional problems of our own making.

Our use of resources has been forever unevenly distributed, and we are not by any means the first generation or tribe to be guilty of this - just take a peek at how the Pharaohs lived, or the Mughal emperors. It is a human trait, apparently, to maximize our own comfort through exploitation wherever we can. And due to the development of our brain, we have found ever-more-ingenious ways to achieve this.

So yes, it is twilight time. Even the concept of population control will ultimately fail, as economies dwindle to subsistence level and individual/group/tribe/national resentment increases.

I'd give us another 250 years, maximum. And the last hundred of those will be pretty horrible.

Pericles
"I'd give us another 250 years, maximum. And the last hundred of those will be pretty horrible"
You are very pesimistic. We come from very far and we are going even further!
Do not forget the genetic engineering, we will remove all the crazy genies from our bodies, we will colonize the space and spread our civilization to many planets and space...rocks.
We will be victorious!
Eviva human stupidity which drive us to our destination!
I am happy from our direction, soon or later we will realize that we are going to nowhere, soon or later we will realize that we have to use our brain!
We have brain even when we do not use it! That's our advantage!
We are honest in our dreams!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

I think it depends on who "we" is. If you mean mankind in general, then the answer is "yes", as mankind has been hitting this wall forever. In the past we had the starving millions in Africa. Right now the underlying cause of the problems in the Solomon Islands is population growth: "one ethnic group, the Malaitans, had little choice but to squat on the ‘unoccupied’ lands of other tribes". http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8790#139350 Other countries around us are growing at a similar rate to the Solomon's, so I'd say what we have seen in the Solomon's is a taste of what is to come in most of our pacific neighbours. The Solomon's have another problem: they are already a net food importer. If things continue the way they are, by 2050 6 billion people will live in countries that have food deficits _today_. http://www.infoforhealth.org/pr/m15/m15chap3.shtml Mind you I think that particular statistic might be wrong, as our good friends the 4 horsemen might step in before we reach it - just as they tried to do in the Solomon's.

However, if by "we" you mean Australia, then the answer isn't so obvious. We produce 4 times as much food as we consume. Our natural population growth is negative so shrinking our population painlessly by reducing immigration is politically easy. Although we are facing peak oil, for a few decades we can get away with substituting other products - providing we don't sell them all off. Given the rate of new developments those few decades would seem to give us enough time to develop alternatives.

Despite all that, if we continue doing what we are doing now there is no doubt we will hit the same wall everyone else will by the end of this century. But right now we can choose to not hit that wall. We are one of the few countries that have such a choice - a lucky country indeed. Being the eternally optimistic person I am, I can't help but think we will make the "right" choice. Mind you, there is absolutely no sign of us doing it now.

Such doom, gloom and pessimism. I personally remain optimistic about humanities future and our ability to sustain a future for our species. I’m being absolutely honest and I am most definitely a realist.

There is always the possibility that Mother Nature will wipe us out with a meteorite or a neutron star going super nova in our immediate vicinity (within 100 light years that is).

That said I’m absolutely baffled by the rampant fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) that pervades our society. Is this because our media is so negative? Is it because we, as individuals, can get access to unfiltered information via the internet which frightens us? Could it be because we feel vulnerable and disenfranchised? Could it be that because society is so complicated and multi-layered, that as individuals we feel we cannot influence things?

As a rampant realist, I don’t feel the fear shared by so many; as a consequence, I don’t feel the need express such negativity about a whole raft of important global issues. Nor do I need to be critical of other humans for just being human. Our greed, envy, aggression and all the other bad bits have been recognized for millennia. So have our compassion, heroics and ingenuity.

For thousands of years we have created rules to mitigate our bad bits and capitalize on our good bits. Such as religious, social, political and industrial rules.

As a realist I feel somewhat fortunate that I’m not tortured by those things I cannot and should not seek to influence. I am optimistic that we will eventually evolve into a benign species without baggage. I will take time, perhaps millennia, and there will be some major hiccups along the way.

One of my favorite “rationalisers” is to imagine myself looking back at one of the great issues we face now, from say 2,000 years in the future. In the same way we look back at what we were up to 2,000 years ago. It’s actually quite rewarding, often amusing and ultimately very positive. Try it.