A reminder that there is still hope for mankind.

[Kata]

The most breath-taking discovery of America's astronauts was that of a blue and silver jewel set against a black velvet background, its beauty transfixing them as its vulnerability was even more apparent when they were temporarily separated from it. Yes, we already have the pick of the crop; let's keep it eh?

If only everyone realised this. As has been said, we need to seriously get our population under control! I plan to do my part

[sammyc]

Ultimately there are too many humans and not enough planet.

If we had simply outgrown our space, that's one thing. If we had just misguidedly mismanaged our resources, that might be another thing. But we are like squatters in a stately home, who have flogged off what we can, ripped up the floorboards and burned them for fuel, laid waste the gardens, poisoned the wildlife, urinated in the fishpond and driven out the neighbours. And then had the face to complain it's uninhabitable now. I think it's fair to feel a little queasy about the idea of someone saying hey, I might know somewhere we can move on to & do it all again - unless, we're sorry, and have learned better ways. Because otherwise, it's not a Plan B, it's just a repeating mechanism, surely. Move on/exploit/move on.

[santa claus]

You do realise.........it's time for plan B.

"Posted by NASA"...really, what did you expect them to say?

You present, if I might say, a rather obvious set of predictions for the future. We all know what the consequences are of the continued mis-management of resources and the destruction of the environment. Quite simply, we have got it wrong from the get go.

Your solution is further 'technological' advance so that we can seek out new planets, boldly go where no-one has gone before and....plunder it. That's if what you're looking for actually exists. Be my guest, go fly into space with everyone who thinks there is a better world in the great beyond. But please, don't leave my home in tatters before you go which is what you are doing. I'm staying and those who think like me will live long here and prosper.

The utopian Earth is not a dream. But it can never become a reality whilst there are those that believe the answer to our problems is to jump ship, burning our bridges behind us as we go. Damn Hollywood, it has created a sham for you that does not compare with reality of our beautiful planet.

We need a radical change in the way we consume and replenish. We need to grow a lot more tomatoes Kata .

Sadly, it would seem your mindset is not suited to this kind of successful future on Earth. Your great technologies such as cars and planes and hard on colliders are abject failures. They encroach on my children's future.

I hope a new generation will turn its back on some fantasmagorical space bubble environment with no rivers, no air, no trees and no wildlife. I hope they see that that isn't 'living'. Better to die here than exist in that sterility.

Saving what we have would be our greatest achievement.

[TeePee]

If we had simply outgrown our space, that's one thing. If we had just misguidedly mismanaged our resources, that might be another thing. But we are like squatters in a stately home, who have flogged off what we can, ripped up the floorboards and burned them for fuel, laid waste the gardens, poisoned the wildlife, urinated in the fishpond and driven out the neighbours. And then had the face to complain it's uninhabitable now. I think it's fair to feel a little queasy about the idea of someone saying hey, I might know somewhere we can move on to & do it all again - unless, we're sorry, and have learned better ways. Because otherwise, it's not a Plan B, it's just a repeating mechanism, surely. Move on/exploit/move on.

The alternative is for us to pass laws, limiting what we can do. We go on a starvation diet, throw away our TV and X-BOX, dig up our lawn and plant some vegetables, and quit our jobs expecting to be able to live on them. Meanwhile our neighbours, from South East Asia, continue with their lives, hosing their garden down with RoundUp. Naturally our vegetables don't grow thanks to the overspray, and we starve to death.

The attitude of environmentalists trying to force laws that limit business, the free market and progress are far more damaging to the human race than climate change. Theirs is an arrogant belief that we have so much power over the Earth. I don't see a lack of resources requiring us to get them from other worlds. I see far more danger from a backward movement to environmental and religious fundamentalism causing the decline of western civilization, a civilization built on technological progression. This technological progression is our only hope to find cleaner methods of production, motivated by a free market, and embraced worldwide. Limiting us to dirty production, and then forcing those same methods to other countries, does nothing but harm. This is the ultimate result of environmentalism.

[sammyc]

To be fair I have not said I am anti-progress (that wouldn't really wash, sitting here using a computer) - just the exploitation & irresponsible misuse that often goes along with it. I also haven't made any mention of legislating against technological advances, although some better control surely wouldn't go amiss? For example, no-one would really argue we need the vast amount of plastic we turn out. Even if we aren't realistically going to grow vegetables and live without an xbox (though our grandparents managed), we don't have to go to the other extreme and create the sheer amount of waste we do. We don't need shops full of utter plastic crap, we don't need billions of plastic bags, we don't need a new phone or tv every few minutes etc. Does it really have to be 'go forwards, or automatically go backwards'? Surely we can do some existing stuff better, learn, modify, make compromises.

btw religion does not come into the issue, as far as I am concerned, just for the record.

[peterb]

As Chuckskull put it, there are too many people using too masny resources, and while it may be a beautiful plant (according to Santa Claus) it is because we have made it so. Shut down all the power generating plants, and within a couple of weeks, it wouldn't be so beautiful, as hospitals shut down, food distribution netweorks shut down, home heating systems shut down.

Go back 100 years when a streptococcal infection of the throat could kill you, or any other number of common infections that are routinely treated with anti-biotics. An era when childhood diseases like mumps, measles and scarlet fever accounted for childhood mortality, and if you survived that, there was always tuberculosis waiting in the wings.

Go back another 100 - 150 years before anaesthesia was discovered and surgery was a barbaric process where the patient was as likely to die from shock as he was from septacaemia. Go back pre industrial revolution to an agrarian economy - which worked because the population was much smaller - partly because infant mortality was much higher than it is today, and the average lifespan of a human was about half what it is today. Do you think the majority of people living then thought "what a beautiful planet?" Probably not, because they were too busy worrying about crops failing, what the weather would do, and how they were going to survive one day to the next.

So I suppose as a species, we are victims of our own success. But do you really want to go back to that sort of existence?

[chuckskull]

"Posted by NASA"...really, what did you expect them to say?

The truth because there are a multitude of entities and bodies capable of measuring the same things and being subject to peer review like any scientific research and frankly the idea that NASA is in the habit of lying to congress is a little on the tinfoil side.

On yours and Sammy's other points, teepee summed it up well it's not jumping ship, I'm talking about being able to keep living on this planet, infact off-world living is miles beyond even what I'm talking about it'll be decades after we begin serious space exploration before it becomes even remotely economically feasible and no I'm not talking about sci-fi style FTL colonising garden worlds across the universe. Resource extraction, and off world agriculture are realistically attainable with today's technology and sufficient investment.

You have to accept the human race will keep growing there will never be a global consensus on population control, it's to ingrained in our nature and culture. Even if there were it would be impossible to enforce, simply due to the state of our world already, less than 15% of the worlds population lives in what we would call the first world and we're destroying the planet as you rightly point out just keeping that percentage living long, healthy, comfortable lives, even if we deliberately limit reproduction to allow population to fall it wouldn't fall fast enough. What possible outcome can you expect from trying to stretch that resource not merely to cover the other 85%, but also the next 3 billion who're rapidly approaching. We can only take so much out of the planet and we're already beyond that limit. No amount of goodwill and intent to going to stretch it far enough, even if we forswear the modern way of life and try to be as ecologically friendly as we can be, it's still not enough, and do you really think you can get even half the world to do that? All trends are pointing one way.

There will always be an environmental impact from any living being, the more there are the greater the impact and there's billions of us. We need resources, lots of them. There's no way round that, I'm not even arguing about most of your ideas about what needs to happen on Earth, it does, but it's not enough by itself anymore. We need the resources, you wanna rip out the Amazon for them or or take them out of a barren rock a few million miles away that isn't quite as crucial to our continued ability to breathe? Neither isn't an acceptable answer. As a species it's a rather embarrassing position to have gotten ourselves into especially considering the opportunities we had, but we're in it and need a way out.

[sammyc]

As Chuckskull put it, there are too many people using too masny resources, and while it may be a beautiful plant (according to Santa Claus) it is because we have made it so.

Well it would still be beautiful, just not for us specifically. Technically we haven't made the beautiful bits, trees rivers fish birds, hello clouds, hello sky & so forth.

Seriously however, taking your example of advances in medicine, I believe that was my point, of moderation - antibiotics , mountains of plastic . (albeit a simplification).

[chuckskull]

We should certainly learn from our mistakes, I don't anyone's arguing against that.

[sammyc]

On yours and Sammy's other points, teepee summed it up well it's not jumping ship... No amount of goodwill and intent to going to stretch it far enough, even if we forswear the modern way of life and try to be as ecologically friendly as we can be, it's still not enough, and do you really think you can get even half the world to do that? All trends are pointing one way...

..as a species it's a rather embarrassing position to have gotten ourselves into especially considering the opportunities we had, but we're in it and need a way out.

Fair post whether we learn from our mistakes or just get into another embarrassing position elsewhere is a moot point, but happily I won't be here to see it, eh.

[peterb]

Well it would still be beautiful, just not for us specifically. Technically we haven't made the beautiful bits, trees rivers fish birds, hello clouds, hello sky & so forth.

Seriously however, taking your example of advances in medicine, I believe that was my point, of moderation - antibiotics , mountains of plastic . (albeit a simplification).

Hmmm, well beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you have omitted the malaria mosquito and the parasite it carries, bilharzia and many other water-born parasites, liver-fluke in sheep, and so on. Oh yes, and the clouds that bring torrential rain that destroy crops and sweep away livestock because the technology to protect them doesn't exist. Although in practice, our ancestors probably didn't inhabit land that was prone to flooding, or those that did only did it once. It is only pressures on diminishing land resources that have forced populations to live in areas that are prone to this, relying on civil engineering construction to build defences. Those populations that don't have the technology suffer (as in Bangladesh in the 2004). In fact we have seen how we are at the mercy of nature with the Tsunami in 2004, and this year in Japan - and Japan is not a technologically backward country. And I have already mentioned the Yellowstone Park Caldera.

What is this life if full of care

We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep, or cows.

But if you are worrying about living hand to mouth, and whether the pig you slaughtered (because there isn't enough food to feed it for another winter) will last without spoiling because salting it is the only way to preserve it, (because there is no refrigeration), you probably don't have much time to stand and stare, because struggling to survive is a constant battle with nature.

But you are right in that many of the things that we use in everyday life (like plastic bags) are a luxury (in that they aren't necessary), and the same is true of a lot of packaging, but the real problem is... too many people.

[GoNz0]

[peterb]

^^ So do I, a serious debate on a serious topic. Feel free to constructively contribute.

[GoNz0]

i lost track at tomato plants.

[santa claus]

Let's not get off the point here: the use of less aviation fuel will be a real achievement for mankind. We need much greater restriction as it apparently gives rise to a load of ol' hot air.

ps no-one said all technological advance was bad, it's just the corrosive bits that need sorting out. They are called pilots .

[TeePee]

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepu...honeywell.html

Here's a perfect example of business finding a new technological solution to a problem, motivated by finding a cheaper fuel given the high oil price. This is what a free market produces. Demanding that the production of JET fuel in the US be stopped would simply mean more fuel bought in other countries.