
Fix earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets - ciconia
https://ecoplanetnews.com/2019/12/08/fix-earths-climate-crisis-instead-of-dreaming-of-other-planets-urges-nobel-prize-winning-astronomer/
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gxon
It's important to break down unrealistic fantasies so that we don't get lulled
into a false sense of security or complacency for major problems. Building a
maintainable civilization outside of Earth is likely a significantly harder
problem than solving the climate crisis directly.

Having said that, goals to colonize space or terraform other planets could be
immensely helpful at developing technologies to deal with our problems on
Earth.

I've also never come across anyone who actually has the view that we don't
need to deal with climate change because we can just leave Earth. Is that
actually common?

If so, we're really not doing a good job of conveying how time critical the
crisis is. We don't have the centuries we'll likely need to develop self
sustaining off world civilizations before civilization here starts to break
down. We have decades, maybe. Even if we develop the technology fast enough,
we'll probably have exhausted all the cheap energy/resources needed to deploy
it at scale.

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Kim_Bruning
I'm not sure you're correct about colonization being harder than fixing local
problems. By starting new colonies afresh, you avoid a large amount of legacy
issues and political inertia.

It can be a lot easier to start a new colony than to convince everyone in the
homeland to change their traditional ways.

That's one reason why I think colonization has always been on the table in the
western world, with varying success over the past millennia.

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Kim_Bruning
I would suggest we maintain the one as plan A and the other as plan B, and
work on them in parallel.

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noobermin
Sincerely, which do you think is more feasible? Reducing emissions in a number
of countries you can count on one hand or moving billions of people off to
another planet on technology that doesn't even exist yet?

We know the technology to reduce GHG's, it's already here. We just aren't
doing it for what I think are foolish reasons.

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jelliclesfarm
We also know about contraception. But that isn’t going to stop the population
from hitting 10 billion by 2050.

The best way to solve climate crisis is to reduce world population leading to
less consumption and GHG reduction.

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noobermin
I'm not sure that will solve it in the way you're thinking it will. The global
poor are not responsible for GHG's because they don't produce it, most of the
GHG (per capita and through consumption) belong to the US particularly and
some European countries (Russia in particular).

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viburnum
This is obviously correct but HN community is in total denial about the
feasibility or even usefulness of living off Earth. It would be easier to live
on the bottom of the ocean or a mile underground but nobody has schoolboy
fantasies about that.

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jelliclesfarm
We should not stop reaching for the stars. Or bottom of the ocean.

I don’t understand what’s stopping people from fixing the earth’s climate
crisis while a minuscule portion of our resources is used for space
colonization.

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viburnum
You can't do anything like space colonization on the cheap. The current manned
space program isn't very expensive in the grand scheme of things, but it's
hardly space colonization. Low earth orbit is only 250 miles away. If you get
started right after breakfast you can go that far on a bike.

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e2le
Oh god, not this again. I will say though, often it's the research and
technology produced from space programs that pushes society forward. I'm not
sure how useful it's going to be to dwell over our impact on the environment
and how many gold stars we have before we can trade them in for a space
mission. I also have serious reservations about humanity being in only one
place, it's not a good idea to have all our eggs in one basket.

I don't see why we can't work on reducing our environmental impact, reversing
damage where feasible, and funding space programs. We are capable of doing
multiple things simultaneously.

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noobermin
I made a comment on this below, the crux of the argument of the article and
the statement it focuses on isn't whether we exclude one or the other but
rather a realistic assessment of the alternatives. That assessment should
drive policy and focus for research which should obviously favor fixing things
on Earth.

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noobermin
This is an important thing to discuss. It's sad that it's flagged here. I'm
not even sure what is contentious here.

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nikbackm
Probably because it's considered a strawman argument. Surely no one actually
believes that moving off Earth is an option to solve the climate crisis.

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noobermin
Unfortunately, this sort of attitude is in line with a prevailing attitude at
least in society today, that focuses on novelty over mundane things that work,
maintenance, and fixing things that are broken. It's not that people who have
a different perspective don't exist, it's that they don't make decisions.

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atemerev
Sure, but “fixing the climate crisis” with engineering is also not an
acceptable option for many radical ecologists. The only acceptable solution to
them is to abandon technical progress and reduce population.

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bernierocks
With all of the humans emitting CO2 from their bodies right now and population
increase that happens every year, dreaming of other planets might be the only
alternative.

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gxon
Mass depopulation is probably the only option either way. Whether it's under
our control or forced upon us.

Even if we manage to colonize another world, there's no way we'll be able to
scale transportation and settlement fast enough to move enough people off
planet to mitigate climate change here.

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noobermin
This is only true if by mass depopulation you mean of specifically the US and
some European countries judging by per capita GHG production.

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gxon
Depends on the quality of life and final population level. Maybe our options
are a billion people living in abject, third world poverty, or a few 10s of
millions living a first world, middle class lifestyle. Depopulation will
happen until we get to some sustainable ratio, whatever that happens to be.

How we get there might also be the opposite of what you'd expect. Maybe the
poorest 6 billion die first, and the remaining rich manage to survive only by
drastically ratcheting down their lifestyle. Or maybe world war 3 happens and
almost everyone dies, but the small number of survivors are able to pick up
the pieces and build something resembling a modern lifestyle.

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noobermin
I don't think you understand the situation that exists. Climate change is a
problem that exists today and so is caused by current consumption levels. The
global poor doesn't today produce the overwhelming amount of GHGs, the first
world does through its consumption. So, if you want to depopulate anywhere to
solve the current crisis, the only place you can depopulate is here.

That said, not all middle class lifestyles need be so carbon intensive. US in
particular has the highest GHG per capita because of sprawl and lifestyle
choices. As China and India develop (although that might take a while) we have
to help encourage them to not copy the US' example but say certain western
european countries which use much less GHG per capita that we in the US do.

