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I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pret

by banach 10y ago

I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). If we start valuing quality over novelty, stop eating animal-based foods and re-organize to live closer to where we work, we can stop the consumption and that is taxing our ecosystem and cut energy use to manageable levels. If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. If we put pressure on our rulers, they will work to eliminate the nuclear stockpiles. There are simple solutions to most of our issues. Once we have solved them, maybe we can start thinking about spreading our species to other places.

jgrowl 10y ago
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. None of those are simple changes.
- banach 10y ago
  I am not being sarcastic. Compared to terraforming, or even colonizing a planet to the point where it becomes a serious alternative to Earth, they are utterly trivial.
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    People are not going to abandon the Earth, so we have to protect it in all ways possible. But it's still not a reason for abandoning our advancement to space. We do have resources to move in both directions.
  - eganist 10y ago
    You're talking about philosophical and behavioral changes on a global and generational scale. Compared to those, scientific advancements in terraforming are positively trivial.
    - devoply 10y ago
      If we don't learn then we will repeat our mistakes wherever we go. Wherever you go, there _you_ are.
    - banach 10y ago
      Many of the cultural advances commonly associated with civilized society (universal suffrage, free speech, public education, public healthcare, a living wage and a reasonable work week, etc) were all inconceivable just 150 years ago. Today, they are a reality for a large, growing part of the world's population. These changes all took a concerted effort from the population to realize, but did not require pie-in-the-sky level advances in technology. Moreover, unless we want to reproduce our current quagmire on whatever planet we colonize, we'll need these reforms to happen anyway.
    - WJW 10y ago
      But establishing a extraplanetary colony would require much much more than just advances in terraforming. All but the smallest colonies would have deal with all the politics they brought from earth, in addition to any differences that develop over there. The tight resource budget of early outposts would probably not allow for much personal freedom and it's not like you can easily make a homestead or something in a place where you can't even breathe without proper infrastructure. Also, it would require massive resources to get enough people to a colony to make it worthwhile in the first place. Deciding to allocate those resources (and deciding who gets to go) would inherently be a highly politicized process.
  - saganus 10y ago
    I think the issue is more with own human nature, as usual. Terraforming another planet is an engineering problem (of course, not only an engineering problem), and in the end it's something that in theory can be accomplished as long as we "work it out". Changing the human nature however, is not trivial by any measure. It's very hard for individuals to change, and even more so for groups and even more so for societies. There are even those that say change in a person is impossible. Whereas an engineering problem can (probably) be solved regardless of whether humans change or not. One could even argue that advancing our technology has helped us change as humans (for the better hopefully), but the other way around doesn't necessarily hold. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for us to be able to realize the damage we are doing to this planet, whether or not we colonize other ones (ideally I'd like both). However improving our engineering skills seems much more likely than improving our nature does.
    - banach 10y ago
      I don't think the issues that are putting Earth in danger are the result of some immutable, unfortunate human nature. I think they are the result of a system that could be changed as easily as it was put in place. Many of the pathologies of the modern society were consciously manufactured (c.f. "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays), and all we need to do is to realize this, and start changing things. Luckily, the young generation is far less bought into the current system, and I believe we will see a move to a saner way of life over the coming decades.
      - pmoriarty 10y ago
        "Luckily, the young generation is far less bought into the current system, and I believe we will see a move to a saner way of life over the coming decades." I hope you're right, and don't want to say that we're doomed. But look at the 1960's and '70s: the young people of that time were far more committed to a radically different life than the young people of today -- and were so on a much larger scale, with the sense of the immanent revolutionary overthrow of society being in the air. While their dedication was not fruitless (bringing us the likes of environmentalism and feminism, both of which are very much in the mainstream today) we still wound up where we are today -- very far from their vision of a radically free, non-hierarchical, loving, and "back to the earth" society. The changes that young people seek aren't always necessarily positive either. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's good. Witness Pol Pot, China's Cultural Revolution, the Hitler Youth, etc. Radical changes are often very bloody, and result in a system worse than what it replaced.
  - xupybd 10y ago
    I'd say the opposite. Terraforming is a massive engineering challenge. People rise to engineering challenges and create amazing technologies. They don't do so well at changing human nature.
ivan_gammel 10y ago
While everything you say is important whether we go to space or not, it does not save the mankind from catastrophic events originating from space, which may seem like having low probability, but still are not impossible. If there's even a tiny chance that a big enough celestial body somewhere from Oort cloud will meet Earth in next 100-500 years, it's time to go to other planets right now to be prepared.
- banach 10y ago
  I agree, as long as colonization is not seen as an alternative to securing our continued survival here on Earth, bar the kind of catastrophic events you mention. We should think of colonization as life insurance; societal reform as a healthy lifestyle, health insurance and pension.
  - ivan_gammel 10y ago
    Exactly. And the earlier we start paying, the more we'll get if something eventually happens. We'll need a lot of time to build as good new home as we have now, that will preserve our culture, our history and our diversity. It's hundreds of years of hard work and at some point it will not be a focused project able to achieve results quickly, but rather more like regular economic development of 2-7% per year with very slow population growth (if the Earth will be green and beautiful, who will want to give birth to their child on Mars?).
- petre 10y ago
  The celestial body from the Oort cloud will eventually solve all humankins's problems, because civilization will reboot.
f_allwein 10y ago
some similar thoughts here on Michiu Kaku's blog: we must establish 'ecological planetary balance' and develop fast enough as a civilization to be able to deal with recurring catastrophes, like asteroids hitting the Earth: http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestrial-civilizations/ http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestri...
WJW 10y ago
I think that it would sooner be the rukers putting pressure on the populace (through various propaganda campaigns) that will make this a reality. Still, there is a nonzero chance of civilization being destroyed by external forces, like a proper supervolcano or a massive asteroid. We should pursue both making the earth better AND colonizing different worlds.
lossolo 10y ago
Finding solution is not a problem, human nature is a problem. > stop eating animal-based foods Good luck with that. Sad true is that people don't want to change their life style. If you ask them for solution they will tell you exactly the same thing as you wrote, but most of them will not implement any of this solutions in their life. They want to eat meat, they want to consume, look at global warming, everyone know what is happening and what do they do on their own to stop that? Looking at my friends, people around me I see everyone recognize the problems, talk about solutions but no one is really doing anything.
- banach 10y ago
  I have actually seen a surprising trend to the contrary among my friends. These are people with very different backgrounds (anything from the hardly-ever-employed working class to researchers), but over the past year I can count at least five people who have started eating vegetarian most days of the week. Just like tattoos and beards, these things can become trendy, and then peer pressure takes care of the rest.
  - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
    The individuals one chooses to involve in one's own life are, without question, a misleading barometer for understanding much of greater humanity. We surround ourselves with the qualities that we seek within, and it is often tempting to overlook that in pursuit of broader conclusions.
    - banach 10y ago
      You are right, but in this case my friends are a pretty good sample of the over-all population. I live in Sweden, where 10% of the population is vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country. This seems to be a growing trend as well, also elsewhere: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-vegans-in-britain-rises-by-360-in-10-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-veg....
mathattack 10y ago
This. The effort to terraform the Earth and learn to get along with each other is much easier here than anywhere else.
pavelrub 10y ago
Yes let's stop all scientific and technological progress which isn't directly related to achieving utopia on earth, until a hypothetical point in the future that will never come. Is everything you do and find important in life directly related to improving our ecosystem and eliminating nuclear stockpiles? Do you think it's ok to be interested, for example, in web development, but not in space colonization? Maybe instead of attempting to force artificial goals on human society, you should acknowledge the fact that people care about more things than your notion of "quality". Denying them those things in the name of some artificial pragmatism is exactly the opposite of pragmatism - it ignores the realities of human society, ignores the actual wishes of people, and replaces them with an artificial ideology. I would much rather live in a world where some people care about clean energy and sustainability, others about colonizing space, others about mathematics, and others about art, etc., than in a world where the majority of those things are shunned because of arguments such as yours. The latter world is a far more miserable one, and a miserable reality isn't a solution to anything.
- paulryanrogers 10y ago
  If humans cannot live sustainably on Earth then what hope is there of existing in any form elsewhere?
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - kitsunesoba 10y ago
    I'm not sure the efficiency of the whole of humanity on earth and the efficiency of a comparably tiny colonial group is related in any way. There's a ton of momentum to overcome here on earth, and any change will need to occur across vast swaths of the population to be effective. That's an extremely tall order and it's extremely unlikely, as humans tend to ignore impending danger if there's no immediate consequence involved. Significant change will be seen at a generational pace at best. Colonists, on the other hand, must be efficient if they wish to exist for longer than a few weeks, and they're a small and smart enough of a group that maintaining efficiency isn't an issue. Efficiency is a way of life for them. If anything, extremely low waste yet modern lifestyles will get their start in planetary colonies and make their way back to earth, not vice versa.
sporkenfang 10y ago
Assuming a severe shortage of animal-based sustenance I could see that particular bullet point happening, maybe. As for wealth redistribution, I may be pessimistic, but how likely are you to give up 3/4 of your salary post taxation to someone you aren't related to and don't know through some kind of redistribution plan?
- petre 10y ago
  Not likely at all. If anyone wants wealth redistribution they are free to go to Norh Korea and live there, see how it really works. Or bootstrap an utopian underground Mars colony for that matter.
  - Demiurge 10y ago
    A country under severe economic blockade is hardly a fair example. You could have also mentioned Cuba :)
orsenthil 10y ago
This explanation goes well with the proponents as well. The problem we are dealing with is a society that creates artificial restrictions to solve those simple problems and will never want to do away with these artificial restrictions. It seems simpler to solve the problems where artificial restrictions does not exist (yet).
justinhj 10y ago
Before agriculture and civilization as we know it, people lived all over the world. Their lifestyles were sustainable and included meat.
- nkoren 10y ago
  "Sustainable", if you conveniently forget about the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Rhino, Giant Sloths, Sabre Tooth Cats, Glyptodonts, Elephant Birds, Giant Lemurs, Giant Otters, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, Cave Hyena, Irish Elk, American horses, Diprotodons, Neanderthals, Denisovans etc. It wasn't until we finished extirpating the majority of the non-African megafauna and apex predators and the totallity of all other human species that we could even be bothered to settle down and invent agriculture and civilization, et cetera. All the indigenous people who we have any evidence of from historical times (eg. the last 5,000 years) are already living in a post-ecocidal world, where every species that could be rendered extinct with relatively simple technology already had been. Sustainable, my ass.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Those large creatures added up to a tiny fraction of the ecosystem - almost a negligible portion. They're visible and interesting - fuzzy and dangerous etc - but of no significance to most of life on earth. Like insects, birds, worms, bacteria etc. Not to mention grasses, flowering plants and algae. No, most of life on earth never noticed the extinction of apex predators ( nor their invention either ).
    - nkoren 10y ago
      You need to learn about trophic cascades. Here's a quick intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q This played out in the Pleistocene extinctions to a very significant degree, having tremendous effect on ecosystems everywhere. Here's an entire conference worth of the subject: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/index.html http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/ind...
pmoriarty 10y ago
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4HL_-VT2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4HL_-VT2Y then come back and tell us how stopping eating of animal-based foods is going to help.
- banach 10y ago
  These are orthogonal issues. You are right that avoiding these kinds of catastrophic events will require technology (many solutions other than colonization have been proposed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance). My point is that there are issues that are more imminent, and thus deserve far more attention.
  - pmoriarty 10y ago
    Such an object heading for earth could be detected tomorrow, and there may not be enough time for an effective response. We have to prepare in advance.
  - bpizzi 10y ago
    "My point is that there are issues that are more imminent, and thus deserve far more attention." Far more attention? You said yourself that 10% of your country is already vegan and growing, that's a good piece of attention to me. How many of your friends are actively trying to get you into a starship? Come on, that's just a blog entry, no need to take it personnal :)
paulddraper 10y ago
https://xkcd.com/1232/ https://xkcd.com/1232/
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  We shouldn't be exploring other planets until all we've solved all problems here on earth. Except that that wasn't what the above commenter was saying, of course.
deleted 10y ago
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blueprint 10y ago
> I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). What a horrible lie to spread. What you said is hardly the case at all. Scientists have known for many decades that Earth is already beyond its carrying capacity. Multiply that by the fact that our natural ecosystem is collapsing way faster than any estimates, and you get the fact that humanity has NO CHOICE but to establish a self-sufficient colony off Earth as soon as we possibly can. You're in denial about the severity of our situation, but without realizing it you're also not aware of the reality of the problem. CO2 is not the real main cause of global warming; and global warming is just the first step in a series of steps that will result in the destruction of human civilization. I've already got verification of this through lots of research and collaboration with peers and we'll be publishing a paper soon. But completely aside from whether this supposed cataclysm is going to happen in 1 year or 200 years, and given that technology continues to develop and be used, why on Earth wouldn't we ensure our survival by distributing ourselves? I would apologize for my tone but to be honest it's imperative that you and the the people around you open your eyes to the reality. If not, you will also perish. Would you rather live forever or perish forever? And if someone appears in front of you and says "here is your way to live forever", would you turn away from them or would you try to verify their proof?
- Demiurge 10y ago
  You keep alluding to some cataclysm but that's not enough to make your point count to say you have some paper in the works.
  - blueprint 10y ago
    Of course. When I find people who are truthful enough to be able to pursue the line of questions that could lead them to having to abandon their existing knowledge, I can guide them to see the world by making their questions concrete enough, and then helping them to confirm them. But those people are the exception. When you observe me doing this on the internet, most people can't understand what I say, much less have the spirit to confirm it. In nature, it's much easier to fall down a mountain than it is to climb up it. In philosophy and psychology, people who have falsehood in their consciousness plus a weak will feel sick and overburdened when they hear the explanations and processes which make them open their eyes to the reality. When you want to confirm something specific, let me know. Then I can give you a specific answer.
V-2 10y ago
Nuclear stockpiles (and MAD) arguably reduce the number and likelihood of military conflicts. If it wasn't for nuclear weapons, we would've had third world war, possibly dwarfing the second in terms of casualties and destruction similarly as the second dwarfed the first.
- mentalpiracy 10y ago
  The rise of nuclear weapons have also certainly coincided with an overall reduction of worldwide conflicts, yes. That said, nuclear weapon stockpiles have enshrined a certain risk that if/when these weapons are eventually used in anger, the consequences will likely be far more horrific than any previous conflict in human history.
ferbivore 10y ago
Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to their workplaces - implement a global wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't start with North Korea conquering the planet through nuclear war - successfully convince every NWS to destroy their nukes and institute a worldwide ban on nuclear weaponry Are easier than the engineering challenge of building a colony on Titan? If yes, please let me into whatever politics-free, single world government utopia you're living in.
- banach 10y ago
  >Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: > > - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation Even if we assume that people are as self-centered as you portray them, eating meat is not necessarily good for you: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-says-processed-meat-causes-cancer http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-... > - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to their workplaces Most of the world actually already lives like this. Yes, the urban sprawl of many American cities will have to go, but it can (and will) be done. > - implement a global wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't start with North Korea conquering the planet through nuclear war Such a system was implemented after WW2 (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan). Worked out pretty well. > - successfully convince every NWS to destroy their nukes and institute a worldwide ban on nuclear weaponry If we elect politicians who are more interested in cooperation than in sabre-rattling, and more interested in the problems of the people they represent than in the needs of the military-industrial complex, they will have few incentives for maintaining anything even remotely the size of the current stockpile. Great though it may be, we do not need an all-out ban on nuclear weapons to ensure our continued survival, only a (large) reduction in the size of the stockpiles. That not only makes sense from a survival perspective, but also economically. > Are easier than the engineering challenge of building a colony on Titan? If yes, please let me into whatever politics-free, single world government utopia you're living in. My lack of cynicism may be due to the fact that I live in Europe, where I can see more progress than stagnation in all of the areas you mention above. Given how close it was that a politician who advocated all of the above policies was elected as president of the USA, I think there is reason to be optimistic there as well.
kobeya 10y ago
> I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth... How about we do both?
vivekd 10y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting we stop taking care of the planet and just find a new home to exploit once the Earth is used up. All we're saying is that we want to explore, colonize and seek out new places. It's what human's do, and it's good for our survival as a species to become an interplanetary species. I'm sure we can do that and take are of Earth at the same time.
dsjoerg 10y ago
Colonizing other planets is _way_ easier than doing any of the things you listed. The hardest thing is getting people to cooperate, especially against their individual self interest, as they themselves see it. Colonizing other planets requires getting a much smaller group of people to cooperate, and it will be in their individual self interest to do so.
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  Seems related to Dunbar's number -- hard for larger groups to remain cohesive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
- wallace_f 10y ago
  > especially against their individual self interest, as they themselves see it. I'm curious how other people view this, which one of the following most accurately depicts reality: a) There will always be opportunists who take advantage of self-interested opportunities despite there being a larger group whom will not be willing to grab these opportunities for conceivably moral/ethical reasons a.Example) Plumpy'Nut - Economists and doctors work together to develop an affordable nutritional product to combat malnutrition. Academic research is invested in the endeavour. Company comes along and patents the product to seek profit at the cost of humans suffering malnutrition b) All people will always grab whatever self-interest is available to them despite harm to their group, unless social structures are in place to align their incentives with those of the group. c) Most people inherently are motivated to work together due to social nature of our species, only a minority wishes to be truly self-interested despite the welfare of their group.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Any answer to this would be a vector. Also, people are more prone to be selfish in some environments than in others. One relevant example is that people that were taken advantage of are more prone to it than people that weren't. And you'll have to add policing efficiency to the equation. We are pretty great in forcing people to cooperate.
olegkikin 10y ago
All it takes is one large-ish asteroid to wipe out everything except maybe a few lucky smaller organisms/viruses that get ejected into the open space. AFAIK, a 300-mile diameter asteroid would sterilize the planet. That's why we should become multiplanetary species sooner, rather than later.
- danenania 10y ago
  But what is the probabilistic timeline on a large asteroid hitting us vs. rendering the planet uninhabitable by our own devices? We aren't currently looking like a great bet to last thousands of years longer, forget the million-year intervals on which large asteroids are a serious threat.
  - olegkikin 10y ago
    The planet is not even close to uninhabitable. Humans are resilient, and can solve problems when they become real. Take the global warming. We actually know how to solve it - we just don't, because it's not a real problem yet (not on a large scale at least), and it costs money to solve. We can put mirrors in space or on the surface of the planet to cool it. Yes, it's expensive, but it's doable. Pretty much no scenario makes ALL of our planet uninhabitable to humans. Except a big f*ng asteroid.
babyrainbow 10y ago
Completely agree. It is a bit scary to see the enthusiasm of some people to just get off this planet..
Mikeb85 10y ago
It's not an either/or proposition. We can become more sustainable and take care of earth better, while shooting for the stars and increasing our scientific knowledge.
- banach 10y ago
  It is not, and we can, but it seems like some of us need to re-evaluate their priorities: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-ear...
Almaviva 10y ago
> If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. I don't get this argument. People want to fuck and reproduce, and the next generation will contain the genes of precisely the people who most want to, and so on. Something needs to check this other than wishful thinking.
- dmoy 10y ago
  The argument is that richer people reproduce less, because you don't need to in order to guarantee reproductive success.
- pilom 10y ago
  There is a ton of evidence that as extremely poor people get richer they have less kids. People who earn less than $1 per day have more than 5 times as many children on average as people in first world countries
- banach 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
sandworm101 10y ago
The very concept of colonization flies in the face of Utopian dreams. This isn't about sending our poor and huddled masses to colonize a new land. This is about investing gargantuan resources into a tiny band of elites. We are talking literally billions of dollars per person to get there, followed by maintenance costs on the order of millions of dollars per person-day. A Titan colony wouldn't be self-sustaining for years, probably decades. That means we many investing massively in the maintenance of the elites on Titan. That isn't Utopia. That's elitism. (See every non-trek sci-fi ever written.)
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago
  >That isn't Utopia. That's elitism Vacations once upon a time were just for the elites. A trip from England to Greece was for the very upper crust. Now millions of people can easily make the journey thanks to modern technology. The whole idea is to develop something for the few and as it scales up, it becomes more widely available.
roryisok 10y ago
This whole comment is so apparently naive it feels like trolling.
- banach 10y ago
  I can assure you that I am not trolling. I am simply convinced that most of our problems are well within our control. Unfortunately, fatalism seems to be very chic today.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    I'm not being a fatalist if I think "we should all live closer to our jobs to save energy" is unrealistic.
    - banach 10y ago
      I think you are. Sprawl can be mitigated by regulation: http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_sub... https://ctr.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubs/0_4420_2.pdf https://ctr.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubs/0_4420_2.pdf
StreamBright 10y ago
This is a pretty neat idea. However as we know mankind is showing some pretty interesting features that can be found only in viruses. "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure. --The Matrix"
thescriptkiddie 10y ago
I agree with you that we need to change the way were living before we screw up Earth, but that's a process that can be run in parallel with space exploration. In theory many of the technologies used for colonizing other worlds could be useful for making our existence down here more sustainable, and vice versa. It's not like there is a finite amount of science points and we can allocate them all to one thing anyway.
overgard 10y ago
You're creating a false choice here. There's no reason we can't colonize other planets and also change local lifestyles. They're totally separate issues. Even if we treated the earth perfectly there's all sort of natural ways the planet could do us in or set civilization back a huge degree (asteroids, super volcanoes, etc.). Colonizing planets makes sense for the exact same reason insurance makes sense - shit happens.
- banach 10y ago
  I agree, and of course I would like us to do both, but in light of announcements like these: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-ear... all I am saying is that we need to keep our priorities straight.
anigbrowl 10y ago
It's fine if pursuing these things is a higher priority for you than colonizing other planets, but I reject your argument for two reasons. One, the whole notion that we shouldn't being working on something until someone else's preferred goals have been achieved first is arrogant tot he point of absurdity. I could just as well argue that she shouldn't waste any more funds on what might be a lost cause before we establish an emergency beachhead on another planet for backup purposes. Two, this position has been expressed so often as to be a cliche. It's not helpful to trot out really timeworn arguments as if they were original, without considering the existing best arguments on both sides. There are simple solutions to most of our issues. Just because they're simple doesn't mean they're right. If things were really so simple we'd have arguably taken care of it already. As a general rule, any system that depends on everyone behaving a certain way is doomed to failure because there's abundant evidence in history that people frequently choose to put their individual interest above that of others. You can't just legislate that people will behave unselfishly; past attempts to do so seem to invariably end in totalitarianism. Likewise while I'm all in favor of reducing nuclear stockpiles the probability of a world with no nuclear weapons is close to zero because it's impossible to forget the knowledge that enables the construction of such a weapon, and the impact of nuclear force on an asymmetrical military conflict are simply too large of an incentive to overlook. In a world of billions of people clustered into hundreds of countries (which are semi-conscious aggregate entities imho), it's statistically almost inevitable that you'll have some actors that are militant, relatively weak, and give in easily to temptation.
whybroke 10y ago
It's not just about survival economics and technologies. We need to establish societies independent of an earth which might become dominated by unshakable planet wide tyranny at some point. Physical distances and gravity well energy requirements inside the solar system may be as adequate a protection for independent cultural survival as oceans were in the past centuries. While this is obviously a long term result, it really should not be delayed unnecessarily.
BobTheCoder 10y ago
Hi, I think both are highly valuable. But I agree that it is remarkable that we appear to be putting in little effort into trying to resolve our societal issues. I think a new system is required. https://opensocialism.com https://opensocialism.com is my very alpha initial version that I'm trying to iterate on. Are you interested in helping? :O
- banach 10y ago
  Sure, looks interesting!
  - BobTheCoder 10y ago
    Nice one :) Generally the logic of the work is: 1. Capitalism is poor at providing value to the majority (eg. globally the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 99%) and ensuring the long term survival of the species (eg. protecting the environment). 2. However, until there is actually a viable alternative it is a moot point. People who criticize capitalism tend to be caught up in marxism which in reality is an old, overly simplistic and unstable system. 3. Use the open source model to build a compelling alternative to capitalism which can then be promoted. I've completed a very alpha version which details the system reasonably well but I guess the current goal is to get help, which I have found difficult. This is the repo https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io which I am doing the work on. I am on an associated gitter channel. I am also doing work on another site to help convince people of the problem that I explain here https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io/issues/4 https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io/i... (will put into github soon) https://opensocialism.com/open-socialism/ https://opensocialism.com/open-socialism/ is a reasonable overview of the main points of the system. Uh, anyway.. Any help is welcome in the form of feedback, github issues, PRs or whatever. No pressure :)
ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago
Ah, this old argument. Always pops up in topics like this and it's still as naive as before. The lessons learned from colonising other worlds will allow us to better manage Earth, much like past space exploration has already done.
simonh 10y ago
This is a distracting, thread-jacking non-sequitur that is nothing to do with the topic at hand. We do need to live sustainably on Earth in the long term, but colonising the solar system isn't going to prevent it or meaningfully slow us down in doing so. Maybe we should do both? It's not an either-or situation.
wallace_f 10y ago
They're not mutually exclusive nor does pursuing one hinder the other. They're not even the same type of problem. The "scarcity problem" on earth, as economists of late called it, is pretty close to being solved. Solving our problems on earth is a political problem. Colonizing other planets is a scientific and technological one.
Bluestrike2 10y ago
It's disappointing that space efforts have struggled against "spend the money here instead" obstructionism from almost the very beginning. Even back in the mid-60s—arguably during NASA's heyday—Congress looked at NASA as a bag of money they could raid to pay for other projects with little loss of political capital. And they (plus Nixon) did just that at their first opportunity. It's an easy target, even more so than most federal science funding, precisely because many of the benefits are sufficiently long-term that the politicians who first voted for space projects will be long retired by the point where they're obvious. People love looking what NASA accomplishes, but they don’t really give much of a damn beyond a general sense of pride in their accomplishments. Wanting to make the world a better place is nothing new. It’s an obviously desirable goal, but can we at least pretend to be realistic about it? Just going by the list of desired outcomes you’ve provided, you’re proposing a radical realignment almost every significant aspect of our economic, political, and social systems as a species. These might not be difficult engineering problems (well, not directly, at least), but they are by no means simple things. And for all the problems that free markets might have, they’re also very good at solving many others. Literally no one is proposing that we go and terraform Mars, Titan, or any other planetary body anytime soon. These are all significant, long-term efforts that won’t be possible for well into the future, and they presuppose the existence of significant space-based industry that hasn’t been built yet. Any terraforming proposals are for well into the future, and presuppose the existence of significant space-based industry that hasn’t been built yet. By the time that comes around, our industrial capacity will be—by necessity—far greater. Even today, the opportunity cost associated with space exploration is a tiny expenditure at only 0.5% of the US federal budget. For decades, NASA has worked on a shoestring budget, with their hands tied by the demands of congress, revolving presidential administrations, intelligence agencies (look at how their hypothetical mission requirements dictated major design changes for the Space Shuttle), and an apathetic public. Space exploration isn’t just for the enjoyment of space-groupies and science-fiction fans. There are real-world benefits, and access to a growing space-based industry gives us a host of new options for dealing with global challenges. No matter how charitably you look at efforts to curb greenhouse gases, it’s very likely that we’re going to need to look at large-scale climate engineering efforts to deal with the consequences. And if we’re hoping to industrialize underdeveloped nations, thereby helping counteract some of the global wealth disparity you’ve mentioned, we’re going to need climate engineering because those efforts won’t all be clean ones. Space-based solar power could help deliver even cheaper, more efficient renewable energy that sidesteps many of the problems faced with terrestrial solar receptors. The efficiency demands of any space colonies would spur continued research on genetically modified food crops, even beyond what would be economically viable for purely Earth-based farming. Plus, we’d likely see further development of crops similar to golden rice in an effort to simplify a colony’s food production needs. Despite the hysterical overreaction to golden rice on the part of certain activists, such improved crops could have a significantly outsized effect on the health of peoples in impoverished nations. Better yields, and hardier crops able to be grown in a wider variety of conditions can also help local farmers overcome some of the logistical difficulties they currently face. And that’s completely ignoring the very real threat of impact events. As it stands right now, we do not have the capability to deflect an asteroid that’s on a collision course. While the overall risk of a major impact event might be low, the potential consequences are pretty scary. No matter how you look at it, we’ll eventually experience another impact event. It’d be nice to avoid losing a city or two, or worse, when that happens. I guess my point is this: even if we pushed for a major increase in space spending, it’s still a tiny, tiny fraction of the 2014 gross world product (GWP) of approximately $107.5 trillion (PPP). It’s as close to a rounding error as you can get when you’re talking in terms of billions. And while there’s always an opportunity cost, that money doesn’t exist as a separate lump sum that can just be redirected towards another project that you find socially acceptable. Nor does investing in space mean leaving Earth behind and repeating the mistakes of the past elsewhere. It means giving humanity more options, increased industrial capacity, and technological advances that can be applied to other problems. There is literally no reason why humanity can’t continue to work towards more sustainable (however you want to define it) practices, while simultaneously expanding its space presence beyond LEO. It’s the very definition of a false choice.
braja 10y ago
Creating an off-earth self-sustaining civilization is also a way to insure ourselves against a non-human-caused catastrophe that could near-wipe-out humanity. A sequential approach -- solving our most pressing issues first before even thinking about becoming a space-faring civilization -- seems near-sighted and inefficient, especially given the other advantages (technology advances and perspective that might make issues like climate change and income inequality less partisan) from a full-throttle effort toward becoming a multi-planetary species.
aminok 10y ago
>If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. I don't see how redistributing wealth will reduce population growth. Natural selection ensures the population will grow and wealth redistribution will ensure it doesn't grow at a rate that's proportional to the growth in resource production. Moreover, I don't see how you can get 300 million people in the US, let alone 7 billion people on Earth, to all agree to redistribute their personal assets.
- kilotaras 10y ago
  >I don't see how redistributing wealth will reduce population growth. Developed countries have lower population growth due to better access to sex education, contraceptives and healthcare. If "redistributing" wealth gives big chunk of Earth population access to those three one can expect to have reduced population growth. This is backed by studies that just giving women access to education reduces fertility as well as infant and children mortality[1] 1. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2003/EmpoweringWomenDevelopingSocietyFemaleEducationintheMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2003/EmpoweringWomen...
  - aminok 10y ago
    >Developed countries have lower population growth due to better access to sex education, contraceptives and healthcare. High income that mostly constitutes personal earnings is different than high income that mostly constitutes guaranteed government transfers. The personal responsibility required to maintain the former creates an incentive to avoid having children one is not financially capable of support. The lack of any such requirement in the latter creates the opposite incentives. Moreover, the correlation between high resource availability and low population growth is a historical anomaly. For most of history the opposite has been the case. There is no guarantee there won't be a return to the historical norm. Natural selection will favor the growth of population groups that respond to high resource availability with larger families, so this is what we logically expect to predominate. Finally, you never answered how you would get 300 million people in the US, let alone 7 billion people worldwide, to agree to redistribute their personal assets.
xupybd 10y ago
Why not aim for both? Also suggest I should stop eating meat and I'm afraid we can't be friends
SocratesV 10y ago
Going interplanetary is not so much because of Earth not being sustainable but more about survival of the species: extinction level events on Earth (and not talking about us making it a wasteland, but rather non-anthropogenic in origin ones) will be less likely to terminate our species.
alkonaut 10y ago
Apart from sudden extinction events like a Giant Meteor™ hitting earth - isn't earth still going to be vastly more friendly than an outer solar system body, even if we ruin it? I mean after a new ice age, a complete runaway greenhouse process, an episode waterworld, a complete thermonuclear mayhem, etc. etc. the ruined earth will still be easier to "re-colonize" than Titan or Mars. If we need space suits to go outside on Earth because its +100 or -100 degrees C or there is radiation everywhere etc - we are still likely to have an environment that is friendlier than Mars/Titan. It's like he says in the article - if we are going to live in caves we might as well do it on Earth. Now - if we worry about our survival as a species then colonizing makes perfect sense. If we worry about destroying the planet, then I don't get it. We can't possibly destroy Earth to a point where it is less hospitable than Titan?
TACIXAT 10y ago
I see a lot of people really casually slip in that we need to go full vegan to save the planet. Why don't people advocate something reasonable like giving up red meat?
Paul_S 10y ago
Any future that does not include bacon is not a future I want to live in.

by banach 10y ago

jgrowl 10y ago

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not. None of those are simple changes.

banach 10y ago
I am not being sarcastic. Compared to terraforming, or even colonizing a planet to the point where it becomes a serious alternative to Earth, they are utterly trivial.
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  People are not going to abandon the Earth, so we have to protect it in all ways possible. But it's still not a reason for abandoning our advancement to space. We do have resources to move in both directions.
- eganist 10y ago
  You're talking about philosophical and behavioral changes on a global and generational scale. Compared to those, scientific advancements in terraforming are positively trivial.
  - devoply 10y ago
    If we don't learn then we will repeat our mistakes wherever we go. Wherever you go, there _you_ are.
  - banach 10y ago
    Many of the cultural advances commonly associated with civilized society (universal suffrage, free speech, public education, public healthcare, a living wage and a reasonable work week, etc) were all inconceivable just 150 years ago. Today, they are a reality for a large, growing part of the world's population. These changes all took a concerted effort from the population to realize, but did not require pie-in-the-sky level advances in technology. Moreover, unless we want to reproduce our current quagmire on whatever planet we colonize, we'll need these reforms to happen anyway.
  - WJW 10y ago
    But establishing a extraplanetary colony would require much much more than just advances in terraforming. All but the smallest colonies would have deal with all the politics they brought from earth, in addition to any differences that develop over there. The tight resource budget of early outposts would probably not allow for much personal freedom and it's not like you can easily make a homestead or something in a place where you can't even breathe without proper infrastructure. Also, it would require massive resources to get enough people to a colony to make it worthwhile in the first place. Deciding to allocate those resources (and deciding who gets to go) would inherently be a highly politicized process.
- saganus 10y ago
  I think the issue is more with own human nature, as usual. Terraforming another planet is an engineering problem (of course, not only an engineering problem), and in the end it's something that in theory can be accomplished as long as we "work it out". Changing the human nature however, is not trivial by any measure. It's very hard for individuals to change, and even more so for groups and even more so for societies. There are even those that say change in a person is impossible. Whereas an engineering problem can (probably) be solved regardless of whether humans change or not. One could even argue that advancing our technology has helped us change as humans (for the better hopefully), but the other way around doesn't necessarily hold. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for us to be able to realize the damage we are doing to this planet, whether or not we colonize other ones (ideally I'd like both). However improving our engineering skills seems much more likely than improving our nature does.
  - banach 10y ago
    I don't think the issues that are putting Earth in danger are the result of some immutable, unfortunate human nature. I think they are the result of a system that could be changed as easily as it was put in place. Many of the pathologies of the modern society were consciously manufactured (c.f. "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays), and all we need to do is to realize this, and start changing things. Luckily, the young generation is far less bought into the current system, and I believe we will see a move to a saner way of life over the coming decades.
    - pmoriarty 10y ago
      "Luckily, the young generation is far less bought into the current system, and I believe we will see a move to a saner way of life over the coming decades." I hope you're right, and don't want to say that we're doomed. But look at the 1960's and '70s: the young people of that time were far more committed to a radically different life than the young people of today -- and were so on a much larger scale, with the sense of the immanent revolutionary overthrow of society being in the air. While their dedication was not fruitless (bringing us the likes of environmentalism and feminism, both of which are very much in the mainstream today) we still wound up where we are today -- very far from their vision of a radically free, non-hierarchical, loving, and "back to the earth" society. The changes that young people seek aren't always necessarily positive either. Just because it's different doesn't mean it's good. Witness Pol Pot, China's Cultural Revolution, the Hitler Youth, etc. Radical changes are often very bloody, and result in a system worse than what it replaced.
- xupybd 10y ago
  I'd say the opposite. Terraforming is a massive engineering challenge. People rise to engineering challenges and create amazing technologies. They don't do so well at changing human nature.

ivan_gammel 10y ago

While everything you say is important whether we go to space or not, it does not save the mankind from catastrophic events originating from space, which may seem like having low probability, but still are not impossible. If there's even a tiny chance that a big enough celestial body somewhere from Oort cloud will meet Earth in next 100-500 years, it's time to go to other planets right now to be prepared.

banach 10y ago
I agree, as long as colonization is not seen as an alternative to securing our continued survival here on Earth, bar the kind of catastrophic events you mention. We should think of colonization as life insurance; societal reform as a healthy lifestyle, health insurance and pension.
- ivan_gammel 10y ago
  Exactly. And the earlier we start paying, the more we'll get if something eventually happens. We'll need a lot of time to build as good new home as we have now, that will preserve our culture, our history and our diversity. It's hundreds of years of hard work and at some point it will not be a focused project able to achieve results quickly, but rather more like regular economic development of 2-7% per year with very slow population growth (if the Earth will be green and beautiful, who will want to give birth to their child on Mars?).
petre 10y ago
The celestial body from the Oort cloud will eventually solve all humankins's problems, because civilization will reboot.

f_allwein 10y ago

some similar thoughts here on Michiu Kaku's blog: we must establish 'ecological planetary balance' and develop fast enough as a civilization to be able to deal with recurring catastrophes, like asteroids hitting the Earth: http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestrial-civilizations/ http://mkaku.org/home/articles/the-physics-of-extraterrestri...

WJW 10y ago

I think that it would sooner be the rukers putting pressure on the populace (through various propaganda campaigns) that will make this a reality. Still, there is a nonzero chance of civilization being destroyed by external forces, like a proper supervolcano or a massive asteroid. We should pursue both making the earth better AND colonizing different worlds.

lossolo 10y ago

Finding solution is not a problem, human nature is a problem. > stop eating animal-based foods Good luck with that. Sad true is that people don't want to change their life style. If you ask them for solution they will tell you exactly the same thing as you wrote, but most of them will not implement any of this solutions in their life. They want to eat meat, they want to consume, look at global warming, everyone know what is happening and what do they do on their own to stop that? Looking at my friends, people around me I see everyone recognize the problems, talk about solutions but no one is really doing anything.

banach 10y ago
I have actually seen a surprising trend to the contrary among my friends. These are people with very different backgrounds (anything from the hardly-ever-employed working class to researchers), but over the past year I can count at least five people who have started eating vegetarian most days of the week. Just like tattoos and beards, these things can become trendy, and then peer pressure takes care of the rest.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  The individuals one chooses to involve in one's own life are, without question, a misleading barometer for understanding much of greater humanity. We surround ourselves with the qualities that we seek within, and it is often tempting to overlook that in pursuit of broader conclusions.
  - banach 10y ago
    You are right, but in this case my friends are a pretty good sample of the over-all population. I live in Sweden, where 10% of the population is vegetarian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country. This seems to be a growing trend as well, also elsewhere: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-vegans-in-britain-rises-by-360-in-10-years/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/food-and-drink/news/number-of-veg....

mathattack 10y ago

This. The effort to terraform the Earth and learn to get along with each other is much easier here than anywhere else.

pavelrub 10y ago

Yes let's stop all scientific and technological progress which isn't directly related to achieving utopia on earth, until a hypothetical point in the future that will never come. Is everything you do and find important in life directly related to improving our ecosystem and eliminating nuclear stockpiles? Do you think it's ok to be interested, for example, in web development, but not in space colonization? Maybe instead of attempting to force artificial goals on human society, you should acknowledge the fact that people care about more things than your notion of "quality". Denying them those things in the name of some artificial pragmatism is exactly the opposite of pragmatism - it ignores the realities of human society, ignores the actual wishes of people, and replaces them with an artificial ideology. I would much rather live in a world where some people care about clean energy and sustainability, others about colonizing space, others about mathematics, and others about art, etc., than in a world where the majority of those things are shunned because of arguments such as yours. The latter world is a far more miserable one, and a miserable reality isn't a solution to anything.

paulryanrogers 10y ago
If humans cannot live sustainably on Earth then what hope is there of existing in any form elsewhere?
- deleted 10y ago
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- kitsunesoba 10y ago
  I'm not sure the efficiency of the whole of humanity on earth and the efficiency of a comparably tiny colonial group is related in any way. There's a ton of momentum to overcome here on earth, and any change will need to occur across vast swaths of the population to be effective. That's an extremely tall order and it's extremely unlikely, as humans tend to ignore impending danger if there's no immediate consequence involved. Significant change will be seen at a generational pace at best. Colonists, on the other hand, must be efficient if they wish to exist for longer than a few weeks, and they're a small and smart enough of a group that maintaining efficiency isn't an issue. Efficiency is a way of life for them. If anything, extremely low waste yet modern lifestyles will get their start in planetary colonies and make their way back to earth, not vice versa.

sporkenfang 10y ago

Assuming a severe shortage of animal-based sustenance I could see that particular bullet point happening, maybe. As for wealth redistribution, I may be pessimistic, but how likely are you to give up 3/4 of your salary post taxation to someone you aren't related to and don't know through some kind of redistribution plan?

petre 10y ago
Not likely at all. If anyone wants wealth redistribution they are free to go to Norh Korea and live there, see how it really works. Or bootstrap an utopian underground Mars colony for that matter.
- Demiurge 10y ago
  A country under severe economic blockade is hardly a fair example. You could have also mentioned Cuba :)

orsenthil 10y ago

This explanation goes well with the proponents as well. The problem we are dealing with is a society that creates artificial restrictions to solve those simple problems and will never want to do away with these artificial restrictions. It seems simpler to solve the problems where artificial restrictions does not exist (yet).

justinhj 10y ago

Before agriculture and civilization as we know it, people lived all over the world. Their lifestyles were sustainable and included meat.

nkoren 10y ago
"Sustainable", if you conveniently forget about the extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Woolly Rhino, Giant Sloths, Sabre Tooth Cats, Glyptodonts, Elephant Birds, Giant Lemurs, Giant Otters, Cave Lion, Cave Bear, Cave Hyena, Irish Elk, American horses, Diprotodons, Neanderthals, Denisovans etc. It wasn't until we finished extirpating the majority of the non-African megafauna and apex predators and the totallity of all other human species that we could even be bothered to settle down and invent agriculture and civilization, et cetera. All the indigenous people who we have any evidence of from historical times (eg. the last 5,000 years) are already living in a post-ecocidal world, where every species that could be rendered extinct with relatively simple technology already had been. Sustainable, my ass.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Those large creatures added up to a tiny fraction of the ecosystem - almost a negligible portion. They're visible and interesting - fuzzy and dangerous etc - but of no significance to most of life on earth. Like insects, birds, worms, bacteria etc. Not to mention grasses, flowering plants and algae. No, most of life on earth never noticed the extinction of apex predators ( nor their invention either ).
  - nkoren 10y ago
    You need to learn about trophic cascades. Here's a quick intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q This played out in the Pleistocene extinctions to a very significant degree, having tremendous effect on ecosystems everywhere. Here's an entire conference worth of the subject: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/index.html http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/events/2014/megafauna-conference/ind...

pmoriarty 10y ago

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4HL_-VT2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc4HL_-VT2Y then come back and tell us how stopping eating of animal-based foods is going to help.

banach 10y ago
These are orthogonal issues. You are right that avoiding these kinds of catastrophic events will require technology (many solutions other than colonization have been proposed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance). My point is that there are issues that are more imminent, and thus deserve far more attention.
- pmoriarty 10y ago
  Such an object heading for earth could be detected tomorrow, and there may not be enough time for an effective response. We have to prepare in advance.
- bpizzi 10y ago
  "My point is that there are issues that are more imminent, and thus deserve far more attention." Far more attention? You said yourself that 10% of your country is already vegan and growing, that's a good piece of attention to me. How many of your friends are actively trying to get you into a starship? Come on, that's just a blog entry, no need to take it personnal :)

paulddraper 10y ago

https://xkcd.com/1232/ https://xkcd.com/1232/

kafkaesq 10y ago
We shouldn't be exploring other planets until all we've solved all problems here on earth. Except that that wasn't what the above commenter was saying, of course.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

blueprint 10y ago

> I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth can easily sustain human kind for the foreseeable future, given some pretty modest tweaks to our way of life (compared to "going multi-planetary" that is). What a horrible lie to spread. What you said is hardly the case at all. Scientists have known for many decades that Earth is already beyond its carrying capacity. Multiply that by the fact that our natural ecosystem is collapsing way faster than any estimates, and you get the fact that humanity has NO CHOICE but to establish a self-sufficient colony off Earth as soon as we possibly can. You're in denial about the severity of our situation, but without realizing it you're also not aware of the reality of the problem. CO2 is not the real main cause of global warming; and global warming is just the first step in a series of steps that will result in the destruction of human civilization. I've already got verification of this through lots of research and collaboration with peers and we'll be publishing a paper soon. But completely aside from whether this supposed cataclysm is going to happen in 1 year or 200 years, and given that technology continues to develop and be used, why on Earth wouldn't we ensure our survival by distributing ourselves? I would apologize for my tone but to be honest it's imperative that you and the the people around you open your eyes to the reality. If not, you will also perish. Would you rather live forever or perish forever? And if someone appears in front of you and says "here is your way to live forever", would you turn away from them or would you try to verify their proof?

Demiurge 10y ago
You keep alluding to some cataclysm but that's not enough to make your point count to say you have some paper in the works.
- blueprint 10y ago
  Of course. When I find people who are truthful enough to be able to pursue the line of questions that could lead them to having to abandon their existing knowledge, I can guide them to see the world by making their questions concrete enough, and then helping them to confirm them. But those people are the exception. When you observe me doing this on the internet, most people can't understand what I say, much less have the spirit to confirm it. In nature, it's much easier to fall down a mountain than it is to climb up it. In philosophy and psychology, people who have falsehood in their consciousness plus a weak will feel sick and overburdened when they hear the explanations and processes which make them open their eyes to the reality. When you want to confirm something specific, let me know. Then I can give you a specific answer.

V-2 10y ago

Nuclear stockpiles (and MAD) arguably reduce the number and likelihood of military conflicts. If it wasn't for nuclear weapons, we would've had third world war, possibly dwarfing the second in terms of casualties and destruction similarly as the second dwarfed the first.

mentalpiracy 10y ago
The rise of nuclear weapons have also certainly coincided with an overall reduction of worldwide conflicts, yes. That said, nuclear weapon stockpiles have enshrined a certain risk that if/when these weapons are eventually used in anger, the consequences will likely be far more horrific than any previous conflict in human history.

ferbivore 10y ago

Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to their workplaces - implement a global wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't start with North Korea conquering the planet through nuclear war - successfully convince every NWS to destroy their nukes and institute a worldwide ban on nuclear weaponry Are easier than the engineering challenge of building a colony on Titan? If yes, please let me into whatever politics-free, single world government utopia you're living in.

banach 10y ago
>Do you seriously think that any of the following global political challenges: > > - convince everyone on Earth to implement changes that are bad for them, like not eating animal-based foods, with only the promise of "maybe in 200 years your descendants, should your line not be extinct by then, will benefit" as compensation Even if we assume that people are as self-centered as you portray them, eating meat is not necessarily good for you: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-says-processed-meat-causes-cancer http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/world-health-organization-... > - reorganise every single human settlement and/or social structure on Earth to put people closer to their workplaces Most of the world actually already lives like this. Yes, the urban sprawl of many American cities will have to go, but it can (and will) be done. > - implement a global wealth redistribution scheme that doesn't start with North Korea conquering the planet through nuclear war Such a system was implemented after WW2 (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan). Worked out pretty well. > - successfully convince every NWS to destroy their nukes and institute a worldwide ban on nuclear weaponry If we elect politicians who are more interested in cooperation than in sabre-rattling, and more interested in the problems of the people they represent than in the needs of the military-industrial complex, they will have few incentives for maintaining anything even remotely the size of the current stockpile. Great though it may be, we do not need an all-out ban on nuclear weapons to ensure our continued survival, only a (large) reduction in the size of the stockpiles. That not only makes sense from a survival perspective, but also economically. > Are easier than the engineering challenge of building a colony on Titan? If yes, please let me into whatever politics-free, single world government utopia you're living in. My lack of cynicism may be due to the fact that I live in Europe, where I can see more progress than stagnation in all of the areas you mention above. Given how close it was that a politician who advocated all of the above policies was elected as president of the USA, I think there is reason to be optimistic there as well.

kobeya 10y ago

> I think that, before colonizing other planets, we should start by realizing that Earth... How about we do both?

vivekd 10y ago

I don't think anyone is suggesting we stop taking care of the planet and just find a new home to exploit once the Earth is used up. All we're saying is that we want to explore, colonize and seek out new places. It's what human's do, and it's good for our survival as a species to become an interplanetary species. I'm sure we can do that and take are of Earth at the same time.

dsjoerg 10y ago

Colonizing other planets is _way_ easier than doing any of the things you listed. The hardest thing is getting people to cooperate, especially against their individual self interest, as they themselves see it. Colonizing other planets requires getting a much smaller group of people to cooperate, and it will be in their individual self interest to do so.

Tempest1981 10y ago
Seems related to Dunbar's number -- hard for larger groups to remain cohesive: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number
wallace_f 10y ago
> especially against their individual self interest, as they themselves see it. I'm curious how other people view this, which one of the following most accurately depicts reality: a) There will always be opportunists who take advantage of self-interested opportunities despite there being a larger group whom will not be willing to grab these opportunities for conceivably moral/ethical reasons a.Example) Plumpy'Nut - Economists and doctors work together to develop an affordable nutritional product to combat malnutrition. Academic research is invested in the endeavour. Company comes along and patents the product to seek profit at the cost of humans suffering malnutrition b) All people will always grab whatever self-interest is available to them despite harm to their group, unless social structures are in place to align their incentives with those of the group. c) Most people inherently are motivated to work together due to social nature of our species, only a minority wishes to be truly self-interested despite the welfare of their group.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  Any answer to this would be a vector. Also, people are more prone to be selfish in some environments than in others. One relevant example is that people that were taken advantage of are more prone to it than people that weren't. And you'll have to add policing efficiency to the equation. We are pretty great in forcing people to cooperate.

olegkikin 10y ago

All it takes is one large-ish asteroid to wipe out everything except maybe a few lucky smaller organisms/viruses that get ejected into the open space. AFAIK, a 300-mile diameter asteroid would sterilize the planet. That's why we should become multiplanetary species sooner, rather than later.

danenania 10y ago
But what is the probabilistic timeline on a large asteroid hitting us vs. rendering the planet uninhabitable by our own devices? We aren't currently looking like a great bet to last thousands of years longer, forget the million-year intervals on which large asteroids are a serious threat.
- olegkikin 10y ago
  The planet is not even close to uninhabitable. Humans are resilient, and can solve problems when they become real. Take the global warming. We actually know how to solve it - we just don't, because it's not a real problem yet (not on a large scale at least), and it costs money to solve. We can put mirrors in space or on the surface of the planet to cool it. Yes, it's expensive, but it's doable. Pretty much no scenario makes ALL of our planet uninhabitable to humans. Except a big f*ng asteroid.

babyrainbow 10y ago

Completely agree. It is a bit scary to see the enthusiasm of some people to just get off this planet..

Mikeb85 10y ago

It's not an either/or proposition. We can become more sustainable and take care of earth better, while shooting for the stars and increasing our scientific knowledge.

banach 10y ago
It is not, and we can, but it seems like some of us need to re-evaluate their priorities: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-ear...

Almaviva 10y ago

> If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. I don't get this argument. People want to fuck and reproduce, and the next generation will contain the genes of precisely the people who most want to, and so on. Something needs to check this other than wishful thinking.

dmoy 10y ago
The argument is that richer people reproduce less, because you don't need to in order to guarantee reproductive success.
pilom 10y ago
There is a ton of evidence that as extremely poor people get richer they have less kids. People who earn less than $1 per day have more than 5 times as many children on average as people in first world countries
banach 10y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

sandworm101 10y ago

The very concept of colonization flies in the face of Utopian dreams. This isn't about sending our poor and huddled masses to colonize a new land. This is about investing gargantuan resources into a tiny band of elites. We are talking literally billions of dollars per person to get there, followed by maintenance costs on the order of millions of dollars per person-day. A Titan colony wouldn't be self-sustaining for years, probably decades. That means we many investing massively in the maintenance of the elites on Titan. That isn't Utopia. That's elitism. (See every non-trek sci-fi ever written.)

IndianAstronaut 10y ago
>That isn't Utopia. That's elitism Vacations once upon a time were just for the elites. A trip from England to Greece was for the very upper crust. Now millions of people can easily make the journey thanks to modern technology. The whole idea is to develop something for the few and as it scales up, it becomes more widely available.

roryisok 10y ago

This whole comment is so apparently naive it feels like trolling.

banach 10y ago
I can assure you that I am not trolling. I am simply convinced that most of our problems are well within our control. Unfortunately, fatalism seems to be very chic today.
- roryisok 10y ago
  I'm not being a fatalist if I think "we should all live closer to our jobs to save energy" is unrealistic.
  - banach 10y ago
    I think you are. Sprawl can be mitigated by regulation: http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_suburbia http://www.ted.com/talks/ellen_dunham_jones_retrofitting_sub... https://ctr.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubs/0_4420_2.pdf https://ctr.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubs/0_4420_2.pdf

StreamBright 10y ago

This is a pretty neat idea. However as we know mankind is showing some pretty interesting features that can be found only in viruses. "I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure. --The Matrix"

thescriptkiddie 10y ago

I agree with you that we need to change the way were living before we screw up Earth, but that's a process that can be run in parallel with space exploration. In theory many of the technologies used for colonizing other worlds could be useful for making our existence down here more sustainable, and vice versa. It's not like there is a finite amount of science points and we can allocate them all to one thing anyway.

overgard 10y ago

You're creating a false choice here. There's no reason we can't colonize other planets and also change local lifestyles. They're totally separate issues. Even if we treated the earth perfectly there's all sort of natural ways the planet could do us in or set civilization back a huge degree (asteroids, super volcanoes, etc.). Colonizing planets makes sense for the exact same reason insurance makes sense - shit happens.

banach 10y ago
I agree, and of course I would like us to do both, but in light of announcements like these: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-earth-donald-trump-eliminate-climate-change-research https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22/nasa-ear... all I am saying is that we need to keep our priorities straight.

anigbrowl 10y ago

It's fine if pursuing these things is a higher priority for you than colonizing other planets, but I reject your argument for two reasons. One, the whole notion that we shouldn't being working on something until someone else's preferred goals have been achieved first is arrogant tot he point of absurdity. I could just as well argue that she shouldn't waste any more funds on what might be a lost cause before we establish an emergency beachhead on another planet for backup purposes. Two, this position has been expressed so often as to be a cliche. It's not helpful to trot out really timeworn arguments as if they were original, without considering the existing best arguments on both sides. There are simple solutions to most of our issues. Just because they're simple doesn't mean they're right. If things were really so simple we'd have arguably taken care of it already. As a general rule, any system that depends on everyone behaving a certain way is doomed to failure because there's abundant evidence in history that people frequently choose to put their individual interest above that of others. You can't just legislate that people will behave unselfishly; past attempts to do so seem to invariably end in totalitarianism. Likewise while I'm all in favor of reducing nuclear stockpiles the probability of a world with no nuclear weapons is close to zero because it's impossible to forget the knowledge that enables the construction of such a weapon, and the impact of nuclear force on an asymmetrical military conflict are simply too large of an incentive to overlook. In a world of billions of people clustered into hundreds of countries (which are semi-conscious aggregate entities imho), it's statistically almost inevitable that you'll have some actors that are militant, relatively weak, and give in easily to temptation.

whybroke 10y ago

It's not just about survival economics and technologies. We need to establish societies independent of an earth which might become dominated by unshakable planet wide tyranny at some point. Physical distances and gravity well energy requirements inside the solar system may be as adequate a protection for independent cultural survival as oceans were in the past centuries. While this is obviously a long term result, it really should not be delayed unnecessarily.

BobTheCoder 10y ago

Hi, I think both are highly valuable. But I agree that it is remarkable that we appear to be putting in little effort into trying to resolve our societal issues. I think a new system is required. https://opensocialism.com https://opensocialism.com is my very alpha initial version that I'm trying to iterate on. Are you interested in helping? :O

banach 10y ago
Sure, looks interesting!
- BobTheCoder 10y ago
  Nice one :) Generally the logic of the work is: 1. Capitalism is poor at providing value to the majority (eg. globally the top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 99%) and ensuring the long term survival of the species (eg. protecting the environment). 2. However, until there is actually a viable alternative it is a moot point. People who criticize capitalism tend to be caught up in marxism which in reality is an old, overly simplistic and unstable system. 3. Use the open source model to build a compelling alternative to capitalism which can then be promoted. I've completed a very alpha version which details the system reasonably well but I guess the current goal is to get help, which I have found difficult. This is the repo https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io which I am doing the work on. I am on an associated gitter channel. I am also doing work on another site to help convince people of the problem that I explain here https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io/issues/4 https://github.com/open-socialism/open-socialism.github.io/i... (will put into github soon) https://opensocialism.com/open-socialism/ https://opensocialism.com/open-socialism/ is a reasonable overview of the main points of the system. Uh, anyway.. Any help is welcome in the form of feedback, github issues, PRs or whatever. No pressure :)

ValleyOfTheMtns 10y ago

Ah, this old argument. Always pops up in topics like this and it's still as naive as before. The lessons learned from colonising other worlds will allow us to better manage Earth, much like past space exploration has already done.

simonh 10y ago

This is a distracting, thread-jacking non-sequitur that is nothing to do with the topic at hand. We do need to live sustainably on Earth in the long term, but colonising the solar system isn't going to prevent it or meaningfully slow us down in doing so. Maybe we should do both? It's not an either-or situation.

wallace_f 10y ago

They're not mutually exclusive nor does pursuing one hinder the other. They're not even the same type of problem. The "scarcity problem" on earth, as economists of late called it, is pretty close to being solved. Solving our problems on earth is a political problem. Colonizing other planets is a scientific and technological one.

Bluestrike2 10y ago

It's disappointing that space efforts have struggled against "spend the money here instead" obstructionism from almost the very beginning. Even back in the mid-60s—arguably during NASA's heyday—Congress looked at NASA as a bag of money they could raid to pay for other projects with little loss of political capital. And they (plus Nixon) did just that at their first opportunity. It's an easy target, even more so than most federal science funding, precisely because many of the benefits are sufficiently long-term that the politicians who first voted for space projects will be long retired by the point where they're obvious. People love looking what NASA accomplishes, but they don’t really give much of a damn beyond a general sense of pride in their accomplishments. Wanting to make the world a better place is nothing new. It’s an obviously desirable goal, but can we at least pretend to be realistic about it? Just going by the list of desired outcomes you’ve provided, you’re proposing a radical realignment almost every significant aspect of our economic, political, and social systems as a species. These might not be difficult engineering problems (well, not directly, at least), but they are by no means simple things. And for all the problems that free markets might have, they’re also very good at solving many others. Literally no one is proposing that we go and terraform Mars, Titan, or any other planetary body anytime soon. These are all significant, long-term efforts that won’t be possible for well into the future, and they presuppose the existence of significant space-based industry that hasn’t been built yet. Any terraforming proposals are for well into the future, and presuppose the existence of significant space-based industry that hasn’t been built yet. By the time that comes around, our industrial capacity will be—by necessity—far greater. Even today, the opportunity cost associated with space exploration is a tiny expenditure at only 0.5% of the US federal budget. For decades, NASA has worked on a shoestring budget, with their hands tied by the demands of congress, revolving presidential administrations, intelligence agencies (look at how their hypothetical mission requirements dictated major design changes for the Space Shuttle), and an apathetic public. Space exploration isn’t just for the enjoyment of space-groupies and science-fiction fans. There are real-world benefits, and access to a growing space-based industry gives us a host of new options for dealing with global challenges. No matter how charitably you look at efforts to curb greenhouse gases, it’s very likely that we’re going to need to look at large-scale climate engineering efforts to deal with the consequences. And if we’re hoping to industrialize underdeveloped nations, thereby helping counteract some of the global wealth disparity you’ve mentioned, we’re going to need climate engineering because those efforts won’t all be clean ones. Space-based solar power could help deliver even cheaper, more efficient renewable energy that sidesteps many of the problems faced with terrestrial solar receptors. The efficiency demands of any space colonies would spur continued research on genetically modified food crops, even beyond what would be economically viable for purely Earth-based farming. Plus, we’d likely see further development of crops similar to golden rice in an effort to simplify a colony’s food production needs. Despite the hysterical overreaction to golden rice on the part of certain activists, such improved crops could have a significantly outsized effect on the health of peoples in impoverished nations. Better yields, and hardier crops able to be grown in a wider variety of conditions can also help local farmers overcome some of the logistical difficulties they currently face. And that’s completely ignoring the very real threat of impact events. As it stands right now, we do not have the capability to deflect an asteroid that’s on a collision course. While the overall risk of a major impact event might be low, the potential consequences are pretty scary. No matter how you look at it, we’ll eventually experience another impact event. It’d be nice to avoid losing a city or two, or worse, when that happens. I guess my point is this: even if we pushed for a major increase in space spending, it’s still a tiny, tiny fraction of the 2014 gross world product (GWP) of approximately $107.5 trillion (PPP). It’s as close to a rounding error as you can get when you’re talking in terms of billions. And while there’s always an opportunity cost, that money doesn’t exist as a separate lump sum that can just be redirected towards another project that you find socially acceptable. Nor does investing in space mean leaving Earth behind and repeating the mistakes of the past elsewhere. It means giving humanity more options, increased industrial capacity, and technological advances that can be applied to other problems. There is literally no reason why humanity can’t continue to work towards more sustainable (however you want to define it) practices, while simultaneously expanding its space presence beyond LEO. It’s the very definition of a false choice.

braja 10y ago

Creating an off-earth self-sustaining civilization is also a way to insure ourselves against a non-human-caused catastrophe that could near-wipe-out humanity. A sequential approach -- solving our most pressing issues first before even thinking about becoming a space-faring civilization -- seems near-sighted and inefficient, especially given the other advantages (technology advances and perspective that might make issues like climate change and income inequality less partisan) from a full-throttle effort toward becoming a multi-planetary species.

aminok 10y ago

>If we re-distribute our wealth, population growth will subside. I don't see how redistributing wealth will reduce population growth. Natural selection ensures the population will grow and wealth redistribution will ensure it doesn't grow at a rate that's proportional to the growth in resource production. Moreover, I don't see how you can get 300 million people in the US, let alone 7 billion people on Earth, to all agree to redistribute their personal assets.

kilotaras 10y ago
>I don't see how redistributing wealth will reduce population growth. Developed countries have lower population growth due to better access to sex education, contraceptives and healthcare. If "redistributing" wealth gives big chunk of Earth population access to those three one can expect to have reduced population growth. This is backed by studies that just giving women access to education reduces fertility as well as infant and children mortality[1] 1. http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2003/EmpoweringWomenDevelopingSocietyFemaleEducationintheMiddleEastandNorthAfrica.aspx http://www.prb.org/Publications/Reports/2003/EmpoweringWomen...
- aminok 10y ago
  >Developed countries have lower population growth due to better access to sex education, contraceptives and healthcare. High income that mostly constitutes personal earnings is different than high income that mostly constitutes guaranteed government transfers. The personal responsibility required to maintain the former creates an incentive to avoid having children one is not financially capable of support. The lack of any such requirement in the latter creates the opposite incentives. Moreover, the correlation between high resource availability and low population growth is a historical anomaly. For most of history the opposite has been the case. There is no guarantee there won't be a return to the historical norm. Natural selection will favor the growth of population groups that respond to high resource availability with larger families, so this is what we logically expect to predominate. Finally, you never answered how you would get 300 million people in the US, let alone 7 billion people worldwide, to agree to redistribute their personal assets.

xupybd 10y ago

Why not aim for both? Also suggest I should stop eating meat and I'm afraid we can't be friends

SocratesV 10y ago

Going interplanetary is not so much because of Earth not being sustainable but more about survival of the species: extinction level events on Earth (and not talking about us making it a wasteland, but rather non-anthropogenic in origin ones) will be less likely to terminate our species.

alkonaut 10y ago

Apart from sudden extinction events like a Giant Meteor™ hitting earth - isn't earth still going to be vastly more friendly than an outer solar system body, even if we ruin it? I mean after a new ice age, a complete runaway greenhouse process, an episode waterworld, a complete thermonuclear mayhem, etc. etc. the ruined earth will still be easier to "re-colonize" than Titan or Mars. If we need space suits to go outside on Earth because its +100 or -100 degrees C or there is radiation everywhere etc - we are still likely to have an environment that is friendlier than Mars/Titan. It's like he says in the article - if we are going to live in caves we might as well do it on Earth. Now - if we worry about our survival as a species then colonizing makes perfect sense. If we worry about destroying the planet, then I don't get it. We can't possibly destroy Earth to a point where it is less hospitable than Titan?

TACIXAT 10y ago

I see a lot of people really casually slip in that we need to go full vegan to save the planet. Why don't people advocate something reasonable like giving up red meat?

Paul_S 10y ago

Any future that does not include bacon is not a future I want to live in.