Thank you Russell, for this important daring thinking. I understand the graphs and from a human standpoint alone, our chances are minimal now to avoid large scale collapse. Purely mathematically there is no problem with our planet holding the numbers of people we have now if you make the calculation in terms of sunlight being converted into plant life and biomass, at least on healthy soils. The total amount of biomass the world produces is around 250 billion tons a year. That could easily double if we cure the soils, biomes and the oceans. Plankton can even double its weight in a day in optimum circumstances. Humans would need around 6% of current volume and about half that once our planet recovers from our ignorant onslaught. We clearly are, as we speak, in fast spreading collapse at all levels of life and we won't get out of this situation without miracles. But there exactly the noosphere comes in: that emerging consciousness more and more people are sensing and feel connected to. I think it is comparable with enlightenment like what the Buddha or Jesus and so many others experienced, but now this is happening to millions who somehow increase the intensity and vibration of that collective consciousness, which is not a property of us, but somehow works through us. Life is a much larger game than humans can fathom and its game is to evolve, to create the conditions for life to thrive. I believe that life, our planet, healthy biomes, are aware/conscious and ''behind the scenes'' are working at pushing us to make that quantum leap, which is our birthright, because it is innate to what makes life life. Will we make it or will the experiment fails and our species gets wiped out or reduced to very low numbers? We won't know for some time, but if we sense with all our faculties of intelligence (not just that puny rational brain) that we are part of a larger consciousness that has the will to live and evolve, we may find that our agency is much larger than we now realized to turn things around. We are connected to those larger, smarter lifeforces that gave us life in the first place and are now at work to make the quantum leap possible before the irreversible collapse of the biosphere (on human time scales, that is). It is up to all of us to put a few grains of weight on the right side of the balance to suddenly tip into the right direction. Onwards!