The suggestion is that it is an intrinsic quality and therefore neither a feature nor a bug.

It's like saying, computation requires nonzero energy. Is that a feature or a bug? Neither, it's irrelevant, because it's a physical constant of the universe that computation will always require nonzero energy.

If confabulation is a physical constant of intelligence, then like energy per computation, all we can do is try to minimize it, while knowing it can never go to zero.

Expanding renewables to the easily replaceable items like power plants, generators, and most consumer vehicles would radically reduce oil usage to where it becomes a minor concern. Also things like biodiesel exist. A more sustainable, renewable-forward, electrified reality is easily possible.

There is not a risk of resource shortage of copper. The doomer and prepper talking points you're parroting are not based in reality.

> How many deaths would communicate "We have likely reached system failure"?

"Failure" is really a matter of opinion rather than some objective tipping point. The air system is unlikely to ever actually "fail", and at worst will just become some arbitrary level of degraded that some people will loudly label "failed".

There are plenty of examples around the world of countries with variously degraded air systems, that are far worse than the US status quo but still are not "failed".

There's Egypt, which has labeled crashes caused by bad design as "someone used a bomb and blew it up" for political reasons: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/07/fire-not-bomb-...

Yemen, in the midst of a perennial civil war, still runs commercial flights: https://www.pprune.org/terms-endearment/653181-yemenia-expat...

Russia, with airplane parts sacntioned for years, still runs commercial flights.

Even if the US undergoes a USSR-style sudden collapse, the aviation system is not going to "fail" in the sense of completely breaking and stopping.