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If I was a billionaire I'd be spending money to ensure planet Earth is habitable.

• echelon 5y ago
  If you're referring to stemming climate change, you won't succeed. I doubt anyone will. Modern society depends on manufacturing, food, and travel, and nobody will give it up. It's a steep fitness landscape and doesn't really work because someone "breaking the rules" will have a substantially easier time. Climate change prevention is a meme for rich countries. It's an unwinnable battle. I'm not saying we shouldn't be paying attention. We absolutely should. But humans follow gradient ascent and won't be willing to handicap every area of life to make modest gains on the climate front. Paper straws don't even make a dent. It's happening, and we'll just have to adapt. Sucks immeasurably for the current biodiversity, but life has adapted to much warmer climate in the past. We should catalog what we can while we can. To address your comment, I think you'll find greater success in extending the lives of rich and powerful people. Once they realize there's a long term ahead, they'll adjust their thinking and time horizons.
  • sybarita 5y ago
    lmao
  • mumblemumble 5y ago
    I'm less worried about current biodiversity than I am about the risk of significant population centers becoming uninhabitable over the coming decades. Some due to inundation, others because human bodies can survive high heat or high humidity, but not both a the same time. It seems potentially worthwhile to fight a figurative battle for stemming climate change in order to try and reduce the risk of setting off a chain of events that could lead to a literal war. That said, I suspect that fretting about space tourism also wouldn't make much of a dent. Maybe more than worrying about straws, but I bet we would get a lot more out of, e.g., allowing the real price of meat to rise back up to what it was 50 years ago.