4 ms·

What if they invested too much into greed and not nearly enough into self preservation?

by firtoz 3y ago

dotnet00 3y ago
Removing significant percentages of the Moon's mass is a whole different ballgame from climate change on Earth, where even now people will debate if it'sreally anthropogenic. There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. As such, I don't think the typical ideas of people ignoring the problem in favor of keeping the money flowing apply, as those are all cases where the harm is some unclear time in the future involving the suffering of people who are not the decision makers.
- tw04 3y ago
  >There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. There is immediate noticeable harm to oil spills, and yet you still have people arguing that we should run pipelines next to rivers because it's easier and cheaper. I think you grossly overestimate some folks ability to have a rational discussion when they've got a financial incentive not to.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by immediate noticeable harm. Running pipelines next to rivers has the potential to cause an oil spill, so the harm is not immediate. There's still room for people to convince themselves that they'll make the pipeline safe and reliable. But the mass of the Moon is so high, that mining and shipping off significant portions of it has to be very deliberate and there's no question of 'potential' in causing a shift in the Earth's orbit. For context, at the rate at which we mine metals on Earth, it'd take tens to hundreds of millions of years to mine even 0.1% of the Moon, and that's without considering that all that mass would have to be transported elsewhere for it to be a problem (and since other destinations, mostly by definition, have their own easier to access resources, that seems unnecessary). Mining all that material on human timescales would be a very deliberate operation dwarfing all human mining from the start of civilization.

What if they invested too much into greed and not nearly enough into self preservation?

by firtoz 3y ago

What if they invested too much into greed and not nearly enough into self preservation?

Removing significant percentages of the Moon's mass is a whole different ballgame from climate change on Earth, where even now people will debate if it'sreally anthropogenic. There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. As such, I don't think the typical ideas of people ignoring the problem in favor of keeping the money flowing apply, as those are all cases where the harm is some unclear time in the future involving the suffering of people who are not the decision makers.

tw04 3y ago
>There would be an immediately noticeable harm with the genuine ability to make Earth entirely uninhabitable, and unlike with climate change, where the mechanisms at work aren't directly relatable, with an orbit change, the mechanisms are pretty relatable to everyone, in the form of seasons and their total disruption. There is immediate noticeable harm to oil spills, and yet you still have people arguing that we should run pipelines next to rivers because it's easier and cheaper. I think you grossly overestimate some folks ability to have a rational discussion when they've got a financial incentive not to.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  I think you're misunderstanding what I mean by immediate noticeable harm. Running pipelines next to rivers has the potential to cause an oil spill, so the harm is not immediate. There's still room for people to convince themselves that they'll make the pipeline safe and reliable. But the mass of the Moon is so high, that mining and shipping off significant portions of it has to be very deliberate and there's no question of 'potential' in causing a shift in the Earth's orbit. For context, at the rate at which we mine metals on Earth, it'd take tens to hundreds of millions of years to mine even 0.1% of the Moon, and that's without considering that all that mass would have to be transported elsewhere for it to be a problem (and since other destinations, mostly by definition, have their own easier to access resources, that seems unnecessary). Mining all that material on human timescales would be a very deliberate operation dwarfing all human mining from the start of civilization.