"For a scientist it’s an interesting thought experiment: ‘If things carry on as they have in the past, when would this reach 100%?’ I often do these calculations myself. They’re fun. But this approach highlights a fundamental problem that we’ve seen over and over in this book. It’s one that feeds into the doomsday mentality that we’ve locked ourselves into. **We extrapolate exploding population numbers and panic that they will never stop growing. At least, until they crash. We see rising CO2 emissions and assume that they’ll just keep rising. Fertilisers, coal, pesticides, air pollution: we’ll just produce more and more**. If you’re sceptical that things can change, then this is a natural position to fall into. "But there’s no scientific basis for this assumption. In fact, **for most of our environmental problems, there are clear signs that it isn’t that way any more. We can, and are, course-correcting.** ([Location 4113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0C3X6X695&location=4113))" --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[conditional-optimism]], [[skepticism]], [[exponential-growth]], **Source** --