"Earth Day" And the Future or Doom of Humanity

[RPGPundit]

It's Earth Day, everyone! The day where we get told about how awful technology, innovation, and our western civilization, and heck, humanity in general is!  Where we're going to be subject to long speeches about "Sustainability", meaning that we should all cut down on our carbon consumption, eat less meat, give up our cars, turn back the clocks, ration food and water, and wait it out in the Cave until the species dies out.

And live off Okra for as long as we can, until it stops growing.

Yeah, Interstellar.  Some people seem to think its an "environmentalist" movie.  It's not.  It's actually very specifically a movie about the MASSIVE FAIL of the modern Politicized-Environmentalist movement.  It is a movement that despises the very civilization that can provide solutions for the problems they claim to worry about, but they'd rather have the solution of forcing our civilization backward into a more primitive state and just use less. And if that means forcible rationing, or forcing people to be farmers, or five billion people needing to be 'gotten rid of' to make the Sustainability-Equation work, well, so be it. For "Mother Earth".

This image has been floating around all day in the G+:




To which I answer:  "This is the only home we have? Just You Fucking Wait."

I will not be scaremongered into giving up on humanity's future.  I know that innovation, that enterprise, that technology and science and the principles of western civilization are the potential ANSWER to those very real problems of environmental harm and resource-management.  We can NEVER "cut back" enough to make it work, and why the fuck would we?! So we as a species can farm in some pre-industrial hippie dystopia while we wait out the next meteor strike or super-volcano?

The SOLUTION?  GMO foods. Thorium Nuclear Reactors.  Yes, also vastly improved solar technology.  Helium 3 from the moon.  3-D printers.  AI.  Going into space and "Imperialist"-ing the living fuck out of it.
And shitloads of stuff no one has even thought of yet, but yes, thinking.  Actually bothering to look for innovative solutions rather than just wanting to use environmental dangers as an excuse to impose a Collectivist Autocracy and force everyone to become less, and humanity to stunt itself.

My two favorite quotes from that movie:
"It's like we've forgotten who we are. We're explorers, pioneers, not 'caretakers'".

""We used to look up and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry at our place in the dirt".

That's the future, for "Sustainability".  That's why I'm not interested.

Sorry, I'm not planning on sitting around worrying about my place in the dirt.  Humanity has places to go.

RPGPundit

(April 22, 2015)

[Spinachcat]

I believe we can achieve interstellar colonization without destroying our homeworld which currently is the only known habitable planet available to our species.

There's no reason we can't be "caretakers" AND "explorers", and there's no reason we can't have uber-innovation AND a healthy environment.

The problem with dismissing "environmentalism" is how often that real science / knowledge / thinking gets tossed as well. I would hardily argue the ONLY hope for a healthy environment depends on uber-innovation.

[thedungeondelver]

Here's my plan, loosely cobbled together from information gleaned off of the back of sugar packets:

First thing we do is bombard Venus with meteors.  Big ones, constantly.  Blow that fucking poison soup right off of it.  Induce some spin, too, give it a nice 24 hour day but more importantly hopefully give it enough spin inside and out to generate a magnetic field.  Reduce the surface to molten if we have to in the process.  Park a solar shield at L5, start cooling it down, stat.  Drag Ceres over to it, give it a nice moon.  The water will help a lot in the future, too.

Once the surface is a mostly "cool" crust, start the cometary bombardment up.  Just dump a few trillion tons of water on it, whatever it'll take to fill up some oceanic basins and coincidentally get a nice atmosphere started.  Preferably argon/nitrogen/o2 - you know, Earthlike.  That might take the fabled algae bombardment, we should do that, too.

I figure in...3 or 4 thousand years, we'll have a savage but roughly habitable surface, and in another 8-10 something wholly livable.

Now, given it's proximity to the sun, in a very short period (1-2m yrs.) we'll have to address the runaway greenhouse effect again, but, by that point if we're still mucking around in this solar system as more than just a museum ("See Ancient Sol!  Cradle of Humanity!  Last Antimatter And Cold Coca-Cola for 6e+10^4 Parsecs!") we'll probably have sorted things out.  Maybe use a truly dead planet as a gravity tug, pull it out beyond Mars, use a few mirrors to keep it nice and temperate.

Now, for hydrocarbons, I've had this idea about Titan...

[crkrueger]

Why aren't we expanding already? Because Megacorps don't see a need yet, and they've got world governments so tied up in protecting their old energy paradigms and cleaning up their banking fiascos, that we're too broke to replace our own highways, let alone pave a road to the stars.

If our only two options are...
1. A Neo-Luddite conservationist dystopia.
2. A capitalist free-for-all where Astronauts are dying because a company wanted to save 100 bucks a space shuttle or because the insurance and lawsuit payouts were less than the cost of refitting a freighter, and where we hear "I'm not waiting for clearance from Xenoscience, we'll be too far behind on the project, start stripmining those hills, forget about that fungi and remember your bonus."
...then we probably deserve to go out like losers.

[jeff37923]

You know the founder of Earth Day killed and composted his girlfriend.

I'm not worried about doomsaying environmentalists, they have not had a good track record of predicting an environmental apocalypse so far.

[JesterRaiin]

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

~ CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

And that's what I firmly believe. It's folly to sacrifice present for the sake of some possible future that might, or might not happen.

[jeff37923]

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.

~ CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

And that's what I firmly believe. It's folly to sacrifice present for the sake of some possible future that might, or might not happen.

I think you need to carefully reread that quote of yours. It does not read to me like a cry for preservation, more like a call for exploitation and consumption.

[JesterRaiin]

I think you need to carefully reread that quote of yours. It does not read to me like a cry for preservation, more like a call for exploitation and consumption.

I don't perceive the preservation of natural habitat as Mankind's top priority. We should take whatever we need and put it into good use.

GOOD USE is the crucial element here.

[Battle Mad Ronin]

The British went and used all the coal they could, and invented smog.

The Chinese are currently using all the rivers, coal and gasoline they can, and are destroying their own country in the process.

The Amazonian rain forest is being converted into useless, eroded farmland.

Most of the South Asian region has become one big no-security factory where workers are routinely locked into poorly built factory firetraps to ensure they get to work on time.

Here in Denmark we poured mercury, industrial waste and pig shit into our water till the point where fish in Copenhagen docks are poisonous with the stuff and the groundwater was nearly contaminated by pig shit.

I'm not saying we should all go be Amish. I'm saying that if we don't take a little care of ourselves now there won't be much opportunity to be pioneers later. Ain't no reason it should be impossible to built a spaceship factory without pouring the industrial waste straight into freshwater rivers.

[Rincewind1]

I could go on a rant, but this is pretty much the environmentalist's equivalent of Fat Acceptance Movement. If you give a man a choice between regulating himself and saying that it's okay that you're overweight, THEY need to change (disclaimed - I am overweight and fighting it), most'll pick the latter option. Because it's easier than trying to develop alternatives.

As usual, Pundit takes 1% of the movement - the Neo-Hippies that want to live in the caves - and forgets about all the rest, the ones seeking to replace current less than ideal energy models with sustainable ones. It's better to think about the problems before they happen, rather than treat the only Earth we got so far (since I've yet to hear about a manned flight to another planet, let alone colonization, unless I've really missed a lot in my half a year without proper Internet) as Mortgage Credit Bubble, hoping that we're not the generation on whom the bubble'll burst. Because I am not into cutting off oil and carbon based energy in one day. But we should continue moving away from it, or at least - having alternatives. Pundit's certain he won't be the mortgage brocker on Septermber 16th, answering the phone. I'm not. Because there's no Galactus to bail us out.

And if you think the HUMANITY, FUCK YEAH has no costs - ask the denizens of Beijing when was the last time they've seen the Sun. How are they to stare into the sky and dream of spaceships, if they no longer see the stars? And for that matter, who'll fund that trip to stars, if investing in an oil company doesn't require funding expansive research first? Or maybe the governments, who are racing right now to see who wins the austerity measures race?

You know the founder of Earth Day killed and composted his girlfriend.

I'm not worried about doomsaying environmentalists, they have not had a good track record of predicting an environmental apocalypse so far.

I don't really think we'll ever have an apocalyptic, one - year event, Jeff. I think it'll be more the usual case of not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Here's my plan, loosely cobbled together from information gleaned off of the back of sugar packets:

First thing we do is bombard Venus with meteors.  Big ones, constantly.  Blow that fucking poison soup right off of it.  Induce some spin, too, give it a nice 24 hour day but more importantly hopefully give it enough spin inside and out to generate a magnetic field.  Reduce the surface to molten if we have to in the process.  Park a solar shield at L5, start cooling it down, stat.  Drag Ceres over to it, give it a nice moon.  The water will help a lot in the future, too.

Once the surface is a mostly "cool" crust, start the cometary bombardment up.  Just dump a few trillion tons of water on it, whatever it'll take to fill up some oceanic basins and coincidentally get a nice atmosphere started.  Preferably argon/nitrogen/o2 - you know, Earthlike.  That might take the fabled algae bombardment, we should do that, too.

I figure in...3 or 4 thousand years, we'll have a savage but roughly habitable surface, and in another 8-10 something wholly livable.

Now, given it's proximity to the sun, in a very short period (1-2m yrs.) we'll have to address the runaway greenhouse effect again, but, by that point if we're still mucking around in this solar system as more than just a museum ("See Ancient Sol!  Cradle of Humanity!  Last Antimatter And Cold Coca-Cola for 6e+10^4 Parsecs!") we'll probably have sorted things out.  Maybe use a truly dead planet as a gravity tug, pull it out beyond Mars, use a few mirrors to keep it nice and temperate.

Now, for hydrocarbons, I've had this idea about Titan...

I think by the time we can pull this off, we'll be well on, or even in, our way of being post - scarcity society. At least in theory, because if there's anything that can match mankind's stupidity, it is only it's greed. Ironically enough, many fanatics of free market forget, that their first prophet, Adam Smith, warned of it and asked to seek refuge in teachings of Christ to counterbalance it.

[jeff37923]

I don't really think we'll ever have an apocalyptic, one - year event, Jeff. I think it'll be more the usual case of not with a bang, but with a whimper.

The first Earth Day was in 1970 and every prediction of doom made then and since then has been wrong. That is a shitty track record for predictive accuracy. It looks more like a scaremongering tactic used to drive funding into Green projects from gullible donors.

[rawma]

You know the founder of Earth Day killed and composted his girlfriend.

Gaylord Nelson did not kill his girlfriend. Claiming Ira Einhorn founded Earth Day is typical conservative crap to discredit the environmental movement, because they certainly haven't had much success attacking it more directly.

[jeff37923]

Gaylord Nelson did not kill his girlfriend. Claiming Ira Einhorn founded Earth Day is typical conservative crap to discredit the environmental movement, because they certainly haven't had much success attacking it more directly.

When did NBC News become a conservative news outlet?

And mea culpa, Ira Einhorn was the co-founder of Earth Day. He did kill and compost his girlfriend though. Which is radical environmentalism in a nutshell, killing and leaving what you claim to love to rot and putrefy.

I can see why the environmentalist movement would want to claim that the founder of Earth Day was actually a democrat politician from Wisconsin and not a remorseless murderer like Ira Einhorn.

[Ratman_tf]

If our only two options are...
1. A Neo-Luddite conservationist dystopia.
2. A capitalist free-for-all. ...then we probably deserve to go out like losers.

The extreme positions are the ones that get attention.

[crkrueger]

When did NBC News become a conservative news outlet?

And mea culpa, Ira Einhorn was the co-founder of Earth Day. He did kill and compost his girlfriend though. Which is radical environmentalism in a nutshell, killing and leaving what you claim to love to rot and putrefy.

I can see why the environmentalist movement would want to claim that the founder of Earth Day was actually a democrat politician from Wisconsin and not a remorseless murderer like Ira Einhorn.

Eh, the dead girl's sister says "Just for the record, again, he did not start Earth Day," Mary Maddux, Holly's sister, told CNN in 1999. "He walked up on — he was an opportunist. He took every moment he could to say: Look at me, I'm the great Ira. I'm here to save the earth. I'm here to make sure that the students don't get too rowdy in this sit-in, but remember it's me, Ira Einhorn, doing all of this."

Ira Einhorn claims he invented Earth Day, he also claims the CIA killed Holly Maddux, so...yeah.