Are we living within our means on this limited planet given the technologies we are using.

An important question is, "are we living within our means on this limited planet given the technologies we are using."

If we wanted to have lifestyles of flying across the Atlantic in minutes on suborbital spaceplanes, we could if energy came from clean sources and the technology wasn't damaging the planet.

On the other hand, if we hadn't ever invented the transistor, so we were still relying on vacuum tubes for electronics, we couldn't be using smartphones today. We don't have to go back to the past, but we do have to live within our means, given the technologies that we are using. Hydrogen fusion might be a solution, but it's still not available. Meanwhile we have things like solar power and nuclear fission. Even with utopian energy sources, however, there are other constraints to our lifestyles, such as if all 8 billion+ people drive cars, can they all find parking?