AT – Finite Resources

Ó hÉigeartaigh 16 – the Executive Director of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), a world-leading academic research center focused on global risks and emerging technologies (Seán, BBVA, “Technological Wild Cards: Existential Risk and a Changing Humanity,” 2016, https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/technological-wild-cards-existential-risk-and-a-changing-humanity/)//SL

There are good reasons to think that with careful planning, this planet should be able to house seven billion or more people stably and comfortably.11 With sustainable agricultural practices and innovative use of irrigation methods, it should be possible for many relatively uninhabited and agriculturally unproductive parts of the world to support more people and food production. An endless population growth on a finite planet is not possible without a collapse; however, growth until the point of collapse is by no means inevitable. Stabilization of population size is strongly correlated with several factors we are making steady global progress on: including education (especially of women), and rights and a greater level of control for women over their own lives. While there are conflicting studies,12 many experts hold that decreasing child mortality, while leading to population increase in the near-term, leads to a drop in population growth in the longer term. In other words, as we move toward a better world, we will bring about a more stable world, provided intermediate stages in this process do not trigger a collapse or lasting global harm.13, 14 Current advances in science and technology, while not sufficient in themselves, will play a key role in making a more resilient and sustainable future possible. Rapid progress is happening in carbon-zero energy sources such as solar photovoltaics and other renewables.15 Energy storage remains a problem, but progress is occurring on battery efficiency. Advances in irrigation techniques and desalination technologies may allow us to provide water to areas where this has not previously been possible, allowing both food production and other processes that depend on reliable access to clean water. Advances in materials technology will have wide-ranging benefits, from lighter, more energy-efficient vehicles, to more efficient buildings and energy grids, to more powerful scientific tools and novel technological innovations. Advances in our understanding of the genetics of plants are leading to crops with greater yields, greater resilience to temperature shifts, droughts and other extreme weather, and greater resistance to pests—resulting in a reduction of the need for polluting pesticides. We are likely to see many further innovations in food production; for example, exciting advances in lab-grown meat may result in the production of meat with a fraction of the environmental footprint of livestock farming. Many of the processes that have resulted in our current unsustainable trajectories can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution, and our widespread adoption of fossil fuels. However, the Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels must also be recognized as having unlocked a level of prosperity, and a rate and scale of scientific and technological progress that would simply not have been possible without them. While a continued reliance on fossil fuels would be catastrophic for our environment, it is unclear whether many of the “clean technology” breakthroughs that will allow us to break our dependence on fossil fuels would have been possible without the scientific breakthroughs that were enabled directly, or indirectly, by this rich, abundant, and easily available fuel source. The goal is clear: having benefitted so tremendously from this “dirty” stage of technology, we now need to take advantage of the opportunity it gives us to move onto cleaner and more powerful next-generation energy and manufacturing technologies. The challenge will be to do so before thresholds of irreversible global consequence have been passed.

Marx is wrong - capitalism is adaptable and will innovate to find new solutions to existential risks and social inequalities

Lausegger 17 - has an MPhil in European Politics (St Antony’s College) and professional experience as a Data Scientist and Consultant working for a technology and e-commerce company. His work focusses on the intersection of economics and politics (Martin, OXPOL, “The Future of Capitalsm: Technological Progress, Block Chains and Karl Marx, 10/1/17, https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/the-future-of-capitalism-technological-progress-block-chains-and-karl-marx/)//SL

Despite this, Marx’s prophecy is unlikely to be fulfilled. On the one hand, he took a teleological model of change that holds that a state of affairs nurtures its opposite, and that from the violent clash between the two a completely new state of affairs bursts into existence. However, the idea that changes happens in evolutionary and not revolutionary fashion seems to better describe societal change. Marx underestimated the adaptability of capitalism. Social systems can absorb challenges, tweak practices, learn from the past and come up with novel solutions to problems, especially when threatened by radical alternatives. For instance, in the late 19th century, as the influence of socialism and communism in Europe rose, Otto von Bismarck introduced the foundations of the modern welfare state, in order to reduce their influence in Germany (Valocchi, 1990). Like in the past, new policy innovations are currently being explored to find new ways to deal with the social pressure resulting from the increasing obsolescence of manual labour, as can be seen in the experimenting with . On the other hand, Marx did not account correctly for the effect of increases in productivity caused by durable technological progress. The Industrial Revolution saw both wages and living standards rise, which lowered the pressure for revolutionary change and served as a counterweight to the process of accumulation of private capital. Similarly, block-chains and artificial intelligence are expected to increase productivity significantly. While technological progresses will lead to new social pressures, new policy innovations such as Universal Basic Income might serve as counterweights. It is true that many jobs will be replaced by technology, however it is also true that a range of new jobs is going to be created. Two decades ago, nobody would have expected the emergence of jobs including app developers, data scientists or Instagram influencers. While certain jobs will disappear, newly created ones will require a different set of skills, put a premium on creativity, problem solving skills and the ability to connect with people. Marx’s revolution, then, will not materialise in the 21st century. Despite this, the future of capitalism, as its past, will lead to new socio-economic consequences and the continued transformation of employment, modes of production and societal structure.