Climate change is the result of exponential growth of the burning of fossil fuels. The basis for that exponential growth is population growth. There were 2.5 billion people on the planet in 1950 now there are 7.6 billion people on the planet. Never before has the human population doubled in a lifetime, and in my lifetime it has tripled.
Fossil fuels are not the only resource that have grown in use exponentially. While doing graduate work in Environmental Science I read a book, The Politics of Scarcity, by William Ophuls which analyzed the effect of exponential growth on resource supply. The conclusion, virtually every resource humans depend upon is in scarce supply and with continued exponential growth in demand, neither new technology nor new resource finds make a great difference in the long term outlook that we are running out of many of the key materials we depend upon for modern life as we know it.
Over the years we’ve been lulled into believing that new technology and resource finds will indeed be our saviors. This article suggests otherwise;
Running on Empty
(With apologies to Jackson Browne)
https://www.fnarena.com/index.php/2019/04/10/running-on-empty/
