2007.09.03
Dubious of Space?
I was going to put this in the comments of this article in response to some of NHK’s comments. Instead, as it got long, I decided to put it up here as a post.
We thump the daylights out of our planet because we have several hundered generations of little need to be efficient, to just dump our crap wherever and whenever we wanted. Despite the best efforts of many our recycling is something of a joke, water conservation is more than a crisis in many places, nutrition is an issue for most people on the planet and for where it isn’t consumerism is rampant.
To solve these problems we need a new paradigm and that shift isn’t going to happen here where, especially in affluent nations that actually have the power (intellectually and monetarily) can do something about it. The Earth is a finite resource and yet most treat it as an infinite resource, either with what can be taken or with simple human population.
So tell me, where is the one place -despite its seeming infinite size- where the only real resources we have are either what we bring or what we build from literally nothing?
Space.
In space we have to learn to recycle everything. Food, water, waste, air, everything. You will not find a better laboratory for this than in the closed environment of a space craft. If you are interested in finding alternate energy look no further than human habitation of space. There is no free cheap high-energy sources of energy like oil up there. We have to find other modes of powering everything.
Just these two examples have direct benefit for everyone living here, including the Earth itself. What we can learn in terms of efficiency and living within finite resources alone is worth it. That we will be building out new technologies that will have similar potential benefits is a bonus. You won’t find many other venues where this is true.
7 Comments Categorized: science thoughts
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7 Responses to “Dubious of Space?”
- NHK says (September 4th, 2007 at 00:27:08 )
Or, rather than shooting loads of people up into space for tough-love recycling lessons, we could try and convince them not to reproduce quite so gratuitously. I’m not suggesting coercion ala China’s one-child policy, but free birth control and some good advertising campaigns…seriously, think about it.
Sadly, I think such a common sense approach would be extremely difficult to implement on a global scale, especially with certain peoples’ lingering religious birth control taboos to contend with. But it does make more economic sense to me than the “let’s move to space” option. Even a partially successful attempt to seriously slow population growth would be a very good thing. And it would have, I think, a much more immediate positive impact than slowly inching toward offworld colonies.
Of course, it’s far less neat-o sci-fi, so there’s no real geek appeal…
- douglas says (September 4th, 2007 at 01:12:17 )
I’ll tell you what. We’ll have a race. I’ll sit on my butt and do nothing but wait for us to go out into space and you dedicate the rest of your life to converting all the religious wingnuts out there to use birth control. Let’s see who wins…
- NHK says (September 4th, 2007 at 09:52:08 )
If everyone *aside from* the wingnuts were to consider procreating (or not) more responsibly, it would still make difference.
- douglas says (September 4th, 2007 at 10:23:58 )
The problem there is that even if everyone aside from the wingnuts procreate responsibly (and what does that mean?) then soon the world would be taken over by wingnuts purely from a population standpoint.
- NHK says (September 4th, 2007 at 15:36:50 )
“The problem there is that even if everyone aside from the wingnuts procreate responsibly (and what does that mean?) then soon the world would be taken over by wingnuts purely from a population standpoint.”
I should think you would know or be able to figure out what I meant, but since you appear not to, read on:
I think people should consider the potential negative effects of having multiple children upon the planet and factor that into their family planning process. As well, people should have no more children than they can realistically afford to provide for without governmental assistance.
As for the “wingnuts” taking over, I tend to doubt it. Yes, the Catholics are really hardcore about not using birth control, but a lot of other Christians (and members of other faiths) don’t have such major issues. I suspect there’s a diverse mixture of consrvatives, liberals and those who fall in the middle that might consider reigning themselves in as far as baby-making goes if they were educated as to the benefits (both to themselves and to humanity in general) of doing so from an early age.
- Mookee says (September 4th, 2007 at 18:29:02 )
I didn’t read the article, but wasn’t this the point of the biodome?
- NHK says (September 4th, 2007 at 19:21:02 )
Mookee, please join the discussion only after you feel you’ve matured enough to not constantly reference Pauly Shore movies.
Kitty-chan forever!
:)
