Fix earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets | Hacker News Reader

Fix earth's climate crisis instead of dreaming of other planets

ecoplanetnews.com

28 pointsciconia22 comments

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The amount of CO2 human bodies emits is negligable. Methane from cow farts are a significant source of greenhouse gasses though. There should be fincancial incentives for more environmentally friendly diets. As well as greater taxes for air travel. In england it is cheaper to fly than travel by train.

A couple do things have to happen in tandem: 1. Switching to a predominantly plant based diet. Not necessarily fake meat, but reducing our animal protein coming from CAFOs. 2. Restoring habitat because we are a super apex predator and we need ecosystems below us to be functioning well. Insect loss and disappearing bird and reptile population is a scary warning sig. We can achieve habitat rehab with reforestation and rewilding 50% of land mass. It’s a start. 3. Protect marine health and eco system. After all, life on earth is only because of the oceans. 4. Bring most if not all food production indoors. 5. Find alt. Energy with a mix of clean nuclear, renewables and fossil fuels. 6. Bring population down to carrying capacity. There is no way avoiding the issue of depopulation. It is possible with non transferable 1/2 surviving child per person so we have genetic diversity. Alternatively, we can incentivize responsible rationed procreation if they have 1 or no children ..but this would lead to a class system. Procreation shouldn’t be penalized but there is no need to incentivize what is essentially bad for our planet. 7. For the above point, we must develop anti aging and genetic repair and tech to extract and preserve genetic material.

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