The world's population has about doubled in 50 years. Unless you're going to send off 1/2 the world's population every 50 years, you've still got serious problems here.
Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction Has Begun According to Scientists
- Thread starter hanselthecaretaker
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This is the single most dangerous perspective in all modern politics. It's just blatantly anti-human.
It very isn't. If you think our purpose in life is to consume and keep the economy that is the grim and dangerous perspective
No, it isn't.
We know perfectly well that many societies have happily gone through their generations in a very different way from our own. Our capitalist society delivers all sorts of progress as measured by many indices, but it is extremely questionable whether it has delivered in others. Most fundamentally, perhaps, what we could call happiness, or life satisfaction. One might even suggest, of course, that capitalist societies have chosen to measure the success of societies with indices that flatter capitalist societies most. As a simple example, we could take the emphasis on GDP growth even in societies where inequality means that half the population barely experiences the benefits of that GDP growth.
People not being cogs in a machine of economy and consumption really gets under your craw, doesn't it?
Jokes on them, there is no place in space within our reach that isn't horrendously hostile to human life, and living there would be so much worse than even the worst places to live on Earth, no matter how rich they are. And that is not going to change within the lifetime of anyone here, or their children, or their children's children, etc.
Me, I've always been partial to watching C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
The irony of this being, all the "woo space!" dipshits and billionaires won't shut up about fucking Mars, and we're only just now prototyping tech that would allow short- and medium-term habitation of that shithole planet that proffers approximately zero exploitable resources and very little in the way of potential learning or scientific advancement -- forget about safe transit and supply.
We could actually colonize Venus in the time it will take from now to simply figure out how to get to Mars safely. Half the transit time and one transfer window every 19 months compared to Mars' 26, 80% the delta-V budget, and all the tech to survive on Venus not only already exists but it's mature tech that's been used on Earth for decades -- if not centuries. And Venus is a heretofore untapped gold mine for climate and atmospheric research, that could translate directly into carbon capture and storage technology on Earth to arrest and reverse climate change.
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While getting to Mars is no small thing, neither is colonising Venus.
Wasn't there some talk of underwater cities here on Earth some decades ago? You could more or less do that if for some reason you wanted to.
I'm not saying it is. But it's probably about an order of magnitude technologically simpler to get to and survive on Venus, than Mars.
True, Venus might be the better candidate for colonization, it's upper atmosphere by far the most Earth-like place in he solar system. Would still be a really shitty place to live compared to Earth. As for the surface, that's a no go unless we can get rid of all the carbon-dioxide and by extension burning hot temps and crushing pressure. Tho if we had the technological capability to terraform to that degree, a much easier and better place to apply it would of course be Earth itself.
But while it's fun to think about extraterrestrial settlement and such, that is a very long list of problems. A lot of people believe we'll just solve those with technology, but it's not a magic wand you can wave at a problem to make it go away. That kind of tech doesn't come out of nowhere, it requires extensive support structures be in place. Something that is much less likely to be if the world is crumbling under ecological collapse because we did nothing waiting for Techno-Jesus to come save us.
As Carl Sagan said; " Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand."
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I don't think that. Kwak does.
No, actually. I love that people aren't cogs in the machine of economy and consumption.
I don't believe that they have in any meaningful way. I believe every generation grows and reproduces, consumes and creates. Why is an environment catered to people considered evil, but if trees grow and reproduce and create their own ideal environment we call that a forest and love it? Most of the aspects of nature that people love are a result of life flourishing to the extent that it molds the environment itself, consuming matter and energy and converting it to something else. What would the Great Plains be without life? A barren wasteland. But people have this image in their head that if people continue to multiply it will create a barren wasteland, but that's not actually the logical consequence. That's just dystopian fiction.
We do the same thing now that past generations of humans have done, and that literal eons of life forms have done before that, that has made the earth the thing we love so much.
Just look at the population of Bangladesh, they used to have a high fertility rate but declined to 2 children per woman. We all want to say India's got a high birthrate it's 2.2 children per woman. In fact, according to World Bank data, the global fertility rate was 2.4 children per woman in 2019. Now they do have high population density making those places not very comfortable to live, but that's where the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil somewhat could come in, and take some of their surplus population.
I don't agree with those people on this, I just find them useful for decreasing the cost of space travel.
Before humans go extinct, so a long time hopefully, but it depends on how fast technology advances, and even politics. For example, China after getting invaded by the Mongols, and fighting them off decided to destroy their navy and sailer expertise. So if they become a geopolitical hyperpower, and do this with rockets, and space travel, we die after a great filter kills all human beings because w didn't travel to space. That filter could be a nuclear war, a disease, or just Yellowstone erupting but we could live underground, and just use vertical farming, and aquaponics.
Personally, I find it unwise to trust anyone's opinion on climate science when their religion encourages them to prioritise an imaginary happiness after death and even (especially?) apocalyptic events than the quality of life for the currently living masses.