4 ms·

I think from a morality standpoint it is an excellent reality T.V. show at best. But we are in such a critical moment right now in terms of our ability to real

I think from a morality standpoint it is an excellent reality T.V. show at best. But we are in such a critical moment right now in terms of our ability to really destroy the ecology we depend on. It's like there a small fire started in the bathroom and some of us have chosen this moment to start planning a new vacation home. For Elon Musk personally, he's so involved in the shift away from carbon through his work at Tesla that it feels like it balances out. He's a leader in fighting the fire and also spending half of his time on the new house. But in general I can't really commend the aerospace engineers working on problems like this when we are so close to being able to fix so many age old problems on Earth. This is such a critical couple of decades for Earth technology.

JBReefer 10y ago
Fires burn too fast for this analogy to work. Even in the worst climate change cases, we have a very long time to work out how to get off the planet. It would be great to avoid, but moving people out of coastal cities certainly has a precedence, and there's plenty of land in Kansas, the Taiga, etc. Life would be tougher than today, but it's not an existential thread.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  I think there's a pretty high probability that such a migration would be accompanied by quite a lot of genocide and war.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    What, NYC vs Rockland county? That wouldn't be a genocide, it would be a zoning argument. Same as Miami vs Georgia. If waves lap up against my place in Queens, I'm not going to start killing my neighbors. I'm going to move to a Minnesota with better weather.
    - imron 10y ago
      You and how many other millions of people? Would the Minnesotans be happy with that?
      - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
        They'd probably be thrilled with all the new tax revenue and industry.
United857 10y ago
> He's a leader in fighting the fire and also spending half of his time on the new house. Why not both? It's not too hard to see how in the long-term, Tesla and Solarcity's progress are relevant to the needs of living on Mars as well (ground vehicle propulsion, electric power generation and storage...)

JBReefer 10y ago

Fires burn too fast for this analogy to work. Even in the worst climate change cases, we have a very long time to work out how to get off the planet. It would be great to avoid, but moving people out of coastal cities certainly has a precedence, and there's plenty of land in Kansas, the Taiga, etc. Life would be tougher than today, but it's not an existential thread.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
I think there's a pretty high probability that such a migration would be accompanied by quite a lot of genocide and war.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  What, NYC vs Rockland county? That wouldn't be a genocide, it would be a zoning argument. Same as Miami vs Georgia. If waves lap up against my place in Queens, I'm not going to start killing my neighbors. I'm going to move to a Minnesota with better weather.
  - imron 10y ago
    You and how many other millions of people? Would the Minnesotans be happy with that?
    - AlgorithmicTime 10y ago
      They'd probably be thrilled with all the new tax revenue and industry.

United857 10y ago

> He's a leader in fighting the fire and also spending half of his time on the new house. Why not both? It's not too hard to see how in the long-term, Tesla and Solarcity's progress are relevant to the needs of living on Mars as well (ground vehicle propulsion, electric power generation and storage...)