4 ms·

so we need to extract resources from space asap, now that the planet cant sustain entire human race

• prmoustache 10mo ago
  No, we need to reduce dramatically our own population.
  • zo1 10mo ago
    That sort of thinking needs to first and almost-entirely be directed at China, India and Africa, then we can talk about sustainability and what the West can do.
    • prmoustache 10mo ago
      The west is wasting much more resources and contributing to global warming more than these 3 continents/countries combined.
• duskdozer 10mo ago
  now this guy's just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
  • tonyhart7 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    • prmoustache 10mo ago
      Poor countries have actually less impact on our planet than wealthy ones. There are many ways to handle population control, not only controlling natality. That wouldn't be popular but you could imagine a mandatory euthanasy at 55 or 60 for example.
      • tonyhart7 10mo ago
        "Poor countries have actually less impact on our planet than wealthy ones." in the near future, richer countries would wage war againt "poor" country to take their water source this is what gonna happen, not if but when with the ever growing technology achievement and billions more people to come and desire to consume finite resources, what do you think gonna happen ????
• maxbond 10mo ago
  Adding more resources doesn't solve the problem that they aren't being managed sustainably. We can't exhaust all the resources in space, but we could definitely exhaust all of the resources accessible to us in space. Like how we can't exhaust all of the oil or all of the gold on this planet, but we could exhaust all of the resource which can be mined economically. This was once explained to me with a metaphor of a bacteria colony in a jar. The colony doubles every 24 hours. So they quickly exhaust the space in the jar. No problem, you give them another jar. 24 hours later, their population doubles, and they have filled both jars.
  • tonyhart7 10mo ago
    Yes, it does
    • maxbond 10mo ago
      Would you care to elaborate?
      • JumpCrisscross 10mo ago
        Resource intensity of GDP has been falling for decades, most quickly in developed economies. Space-based resource extraction isn’t going to be radically cheaper (if it ever is cheaper) than terrestrial sources with known propulsion, so that balance is unlikely to shift. Herego, replacing terrestrial extraction with moderately-cheaper space-based extraction would reduce harm to our ecosystem without changing our economies to turbo-consume materials and thereby accelerate terrestrial extraction.
        • maxbond 10mo ago
          I agree it may reduce harm (depending on how the actual costs shake out), but the calculus remains that if you have access to finite resources but your needs are expanding exponentially, and you are not recycling them in some way, you will run out of resources no matter how many you have. I'm not opposed to exploiting resources in space, I think we should pursue the goal of being an "interplanetary species", but I think it's important to understand that it isn't a silver bullet or a free lunch. We still have to change our economy to be more sustainable. Not to mention that it is not clear that exploiting space resources or becoming interplanetary is possible. I presume that it is. But we shouldn't bank our future on something unproven. We don't know if we're a decade away from mining our first asteroid or a century. We should assume that our future is here on Earth with the resources currently available to us, until proven otherwise.