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The Underfunded, Disorganized Plan to Save Earth from the Next Giant Asteroid
- arbuge 11y agoIn a sense, it's an example of the tragedy of the commons at a national level: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons No one nation feels it should bear the burden of doing this alone, and so none is especially motivated to do so. To be clear, even if all nations were united under a single government, that government would likely feel little motivation too, owing to the perceived low probability of an asteroid event in any given political time period.
- nmrm2 11y agoI think the low probability explanation is more plausible than the commons explanation. Scientific funding for non-classified projects -- which constitutes most funding -- is partially a contribution to the commons. The development of human capital on the home front is a unique benefit to the funding country, but the results get disseminated and -- in principle -- there's nothing stopping a company in another country from commercializing first. Also, I agree the politics of asteroids are really inractable. Lots of people think of asteroids as a plot device for egg-head sci-fi fans rather than an actual existential threat. (FTR, I think that, in general, we should be doing a better job as a species at buying insurance policies to protect ourselves against extinction-level events.)
- seanp2k2 11y agoIn my dying breath though, I would laugh that because everyone was so busy chasing the next Big Shiny, we lost sight of the big shiny which would lead to our [premature but inevitable] extinction.