Talking to my brother about the future

We started talking about crypto and how the U.S. dollar might lose its value. Then I brought up how I think most of the tasks currently done by the human labor force will be automated. We’ve won. We’re the most dominant species on the planet, but we can’t stop ourselves. We’re at the peak, but we’re about to fall off a cliff. My brother mentioned the importance of sustainability. We need to engineer and produce sustainably. But it’s more than just an economic problem. It’s an emotional and spiritual problem.
“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal

My brother said he doesn’t have a problem sitting alone in a room. I asked him, what do you do? He said, think and create, come up with new ideas. I said, that’s the problem, we can’t stop thinking and making. He said, no, not thinking about new ways to produce, thinking about how to modify, reuse, and recycle. Thinking about how to repurpose all the trash in our landfills, how to clean up all the waste in our oceans. He said, I think the change is going to happen when our generation realizes that our kids are not going to have a full lifetime on earth.

This made me see a new perspective. We can still use our economic energies to go in reverse instead of forward. But still, we are just putting off the problem. What will we do once the landfills are recycled, once the oceans are clean? What will we work on then?