I think it’s pretty clear that unless human value for life changes drastically, we will continue to experience net growth. We’ll be more able to prevent undesirable death, and people in general will still like to have children (however it’s done at that point).

–anyway, I read Robin’s post differently: I think he’s saying that we may preserve nature, but a lot of it will end up becoming, more or less, parks or managed ecosystems.

I don’t think it will escape the attention of capitalist that they rely on the earth for natural resources and that technological advanced will decrease, not increase, our reliance and impact on nature and not the other way around.

Reliance: sure, they’ll try to decrease reliance. Impact? Really skeptical that most people will act to minimize impact. I don’t see it as overwhelmingly likely that enough technological progress will be put in that direction. It can, and I don’t think we can completely wipe ourselves out in this regard, but at least a few possible changes environmentalists envision as horrible permanent disasters may actually be done deals.