> Club of Rome are neo-Malthusians

Nah, maybe Milei has picked up this narrative somewhere without questioning or he's intentionally misinterpreting Club of Rome's primary message: earth and its ecosphere are finite and they won't bear an ever-growing mass flow of waste chemicals coming out of unsustainable processes without undergoing radical detrimental changes.

Nothing "Malthusian" about this message, it's pure physics/chemistry.

Which isn't to say I reject Milei in general. I excpet he'll overall bring more good than bad for Argentinians. We'll see.

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As to Techno-optimism .. it appears often quite naive to me.

Somehow people seem to think that there will be many more major scientific/technological break-throughs that will radically improve the situation with scarce resources.

I think this is mostly false hope.

Why? Because in many fields it seems like science/tech is already operating close to some hard physical limits.

Take batteries as an example. Some people believe we will magically find new kinds of batteries, maybe made from novel materials or something, that will have x-times the energy density. I don't think we will ever invent a battery with say 5 times the volumetric energy density of current Li-Ion type batteries.

Why? Because fundamentally what a battery does is store energy in the form of many electrons at high potential in some fixed volume of material. How should it be possible to increase the density or potential of the electrons further and further? That'd be absolutely unrealistic.

I think the current volumetric energy density of batteries isn't too far from the maximum we'll ever reach. Maybe we'll some time reach factor 2. But 5 or even 10? I very much doubt it.

Similar situation probably goes for many other fields/topics that are already close to physical/chemical limits.