Behind all the talk of disposable income, job creation, and so on, lies the physical reality that supports human societies. An industrial civilization runs on energy, land, and water. It runs on farmland that doesn’t blow away as dust, on electricity that can be kept up and running through thick and thin, and so on.

If we take care of this, and build the new energy infrastructure and abstain from trashing the climate too badly, the rest will sort itself out. We’re bright enough, and our computers are just getting faster. We can invent our way around any raw material shortage given enough energy. Given a halfway reasonable climate, seedtime and harvest will cycle like usual. And then we’re set.

We’re not much at risk of falling into a semi-permanent bad-government trap such as has swallowed North Korea. We’re not much at risk of falling into one of any number of religious fundamentalism traps that have plagued history. Social collapse isn’t in the cards unless driven by physical collapse.