The Earth as we both know and cherish it will be unrecognizable within 50 years unless radical advances in either livingry or space development occur. The reason is simple. If desperate people are cornered with death or ripping down the few remaining trees to eat, they will rip down the last tree if necessary. Imagine the the fate of Christmas Island, only global… a seething hot, roasting, desertified post-apocolyptic wasteland. Is this the Earth you want to settle down in with your hooch, guitar and shotgun? Because that is the Earth we’re going to inherit unless we innovate and expand our survival options offworld.

Oh you responded… I should have checked back sooner. :)

Firstly, I never mentioned that I would go. Having not been there myself, I would certainly want to go for the experience, to see the Earth in all it’s majestic beauty amidst the backdrop of the cosmos. Surely such an experience would be eye and mind opener and give me greater perspective on the meaning of life. As to whether I would stay there would depend on the prospects of what lies beyond. Would we have the ability to fully replicate and scale biospheres on colonies of various sizes? Would more rapid space travel allow travel to nearby stars in within a fraction of normal human lifetime? Would life extension be at a point, that human lifespans no longer pose limits? These and many other unanwered questions would need to be addressed before I could make the decision to push further into the cosmos, or live out the remainder of my years comfortably nestled in some hobbiton backwoods of peace and harmony [note: I'm currently living on 40 acres with food garden, the beginnings of an edible forest, loop greenhouses, etc.]

I too love the Earth as well as the human species, despite our current problems. The prospect of seeing the Earth’s environment experience another severe culling of both biodiversity and human population is something that does not sit well with me. If we have the power to avert it or at least mitigate the worst from happening I believe we should do so. The growing resignation that is currently plaguing the environmental left is getting very tiresome very fast. I have frankly been suprised at the level of defeatism from many so-called intelligent innovators, such as Adam Greenfield and Daniel Pinchbeck. They clearly underestimate both the survival instinct as well as human ingenuity.

Assuming thinkers such as deep ecologist James Lovelock and techoutopian Kieth Henson are correct, who both predict the biosphere in combination with our current technology can support no more than 1 Billion people, then there would be only two options. One, 80-90% of the human population dies off mostly through intensely violent resouces wars, starvation, disease and genocide. Or two, new design science livingry (i.e sustainable/appropriate technology) in combination with space development (i.e. moving most industry and people off-world) allows everyone to win. The environmentalists get a “new earth” that is free from overpopulation, pollution and nonregenerative resource extraction. Those who wish to continue the evolution of life off-world, in alignment with life’s inexorable drive to spread itself as widely as possible, can continue, survive and thrive onwards.

Peace,

Paul

Clearly as long as we continue doing business within a fragile planetary ecosystem, pretty much everything we do needs to change, adapt, ephermalize, regenerate. I just hope that along with these changes, we don’t loose site of the bigger impetus which this all points – which is to continue onward, upward, outward off the planet and become a space faring species.

This is the first time in our planets evolution such a possibility is upon us. Given what’s at stake (massive ecological, economic and population collapse), it’s now or never that a strong push for space development must be made. Those talking about peak civilization and mandatory de-industrialization are a depressing, anti-evolutionary lot.

I think when real-world constraints start culling the population, radical evolutionary pressures upward will re-exert themselves. I’ve never known people to go quietly in the night, especially when bigger, better alternatives present themselves.

My fellow Lifeboat advisor Brian Wang is actively working on some very radical space propulsion designs which could reduce orbital launch costs to less than $1/Kg without the need for any new technological advances.

When billions of lives are at stake from a lack of biosphere support capacity, space migration is by far the saner choice, especially when many if not most industrial processes can be taken off world. This should give the ecoheads joy as the planet could then go back to being a veritable garden of Eden without devolution or death.