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It Is No Longer Possible to Escape What We Have Done to Ourselves
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
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Space isn't the answer. Save earth.
Space is the only answer at this point that makes any sense. Without human expansion into space, we can't solve climate change.
Oh fuck off. We could have solved this decades ago without the need to be in space.
No, actually, we couldn't, and those are the hard facts you didn't want to hear because you cared more about punishing humanity just for existing in the industrial age than on moving forward like you should have been doing.
We only have 80 years' worth of uranium on the planet, so nuclear, our best chance of on-surface clean energy, won't last much longer, certainly not after the end of the century. Alpha-gen's grandkids will needlessly suffer if that's the only or even the primary route taken.
On surface green energy require rare earth metals mined using slavery primarily in the Congo Basin where the fucking rainforest is being dug out so we can all have cheap cell phone and electric car batteries. Is that really what you want? 90% of the world's supply is controlled by China; do you want them to be able to use their near monopoly on the stuff to dominate everyone else?
Or, we could go out into space and mine near-Earth asteroids or the Moon for the stuff, and build space solar power stations which governments have been experimenting with for decades, and have near-unlimited access to 24/7 solar power and rare-earths for thousands of years, drop the prices of all metals so low that all construction and manufacturing costs tank with them, making housing much more available for everyone else than it ever has been including the global south, take advantage of space's powerful psychological effects to end conflicts and foster international cooperation the likes of which have never been seen so we don't nuke each other to kingdom come, and actually have some peace?
Also industry can and should be moved up there too so large swaths of the Earth can be rewilded and allowed to heal.
When the shit really hits the fan, the only safe way to geoengineer ourselves out of climate catastrophe will be to construct a solar shade that can be taken down whenever we want instead of letting idiots in the U.S. and EU spray sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere like they're planning to do.
There are a multitude of reasons why we need to go to space to solve climate change.