This is not an especially new view, nor is it
unique to Professor Hawking or even a select few individuals. Many people
support the idea of colonization of other planets as a means of avoiding
natural and man-made ecological disasters and effectively not putting all our
“eggs in one basket.” It is a survivalist mentality that supports the continued
existence of the human race above all other concerns. We must be mindful of our
impact on the world, but our own survival comes first. It is perhaps a natural
line of thinking, as individual survival is coded into our genes, but simply
being natural does not mean it should be taken as the correct line of thinking.
In this essay I will attempt to present the case
that colonization of other worlds should not be entertained as an idea to solve
the problems of this world, and that if we are to be moral beings we must
consider our place within the universe before pushing forever forwards towards
a ceaseless and thoughtless expansion.
The world is small. Scarce resources grow ever scarcer as the population surges and swells. According to the UN, the estimate for the world population reached 7 billion on October 30, 2011, and while the pace of population growth is expected to level off, there is still quite a bit more growing to do. At the same time, people expect higher standards of living, and as India and China continue to grow economically, more people will be consuming much more resources. With oil supplies seemingly in decline, attention has focused more sharply on alternative energy. But alternative forms of energy can only delay the fact that all resources are finite. Electric cars require batteries, and batteries are dependent upon rare earth metals, whose very name signals that they will not be around until the end of time. It is not a new problem for humanity. In England they burned trees until there were scarcely any left, then discovered coal and blackened the skies and the lungs of children, and eventually moved on to oil and now other forms of energy. The moral seems to be that human ingenuity will find a way to continue to progress in spite of the roadblocks. However that ignores the simple fact that the roadblocks are fundamental, and that our ingenuity only permits us to forestall the inevitable, not prevent it. If the expansionist march is to continue, at some point it must expand beyond this planet. On our present course, we will suck our mother dry, and say the proponents of colonization, we must cast the wench aside and seek new more bountiful sources to satiate ourselves.
Finite resources are hardly the biggest of
humanity’s problems. The spectre of destruction from within and without,
whether nuclear holocaust or asteroid impact, remains, and is one more reason
to safeguard ourselves by spreading the human seed out amongst the stars.
But this thinking is misguided. It seeks to run
away from our problems rather than facing them head on, and advocates a pattern
of behaviour whose end game is to leave the mothers of the universe barren.
More importantly perhaps, it leads to an existence that ensures a diminished
quality of life in comparison to our potential. It is unfair to future
generations to saddle them with our ecological problems, their only alternative being to spread out and find new fields to spoil. We owe it to
ourselves, to future generations, and to the ecosystems that we are a part of,
to find ways to manage our growth and consumption so that we are sustainable.
Of course, sustainability in the very long term is not achievable: the sun will
die, the universe will end, and humanity cannot sustain itself indefinitely by
learning to strike a balance with its resources. But we can manage ourselves so
that we are not faced with the need to jump ship by our own doing.
Only when we have learned to live within our means, within the confines of what
is reasonable, should we even consider ourselves remotely prepared to set sail
in the cosmos, searching for new homes. Without the ability to properly manage
our resources and strike a balance that finds a purpose for humanity in the
larger scheme of the universe aside from expansion for expansion’s sake, we are
nothing more than a runaway virus - a parasite on the face of the universe that
squanders plenty and takes more beauty than it leaves behind. Why should such a
race be preserved? Should we even be opposed to the idea of obliterating such a
race from the face of the universe? Humanity is not without its virtues, we
produce art, science, technology, and great works of the mind and of emotion.
We may be the only ones to appreciate these things, but it does not lessen
their impact. Yet at the same time we have many flaws, and in our current
state, our flaws outpace our virtues, such that it seems the things that we
could look at generations from now with pride are drowned out by the dreary
unpleasantness we leave in our wake. We need to be something that we can be
proud of, if we are to grow out into the universe. And what better a place to
develop the characteristics that we need than our own home planet? It is a
place that we are perfectly adapted to, where we already have everything that
we need for survival. The earth is the ideal proving ground for us to learn how to cooperate with
ourselves and our environment and to develop the skills necessary to reach out to
the stars, not as a desperate parasite seeking new host bodies for refuge, but
as a thoughtful and orderly force for good and stability in a cold and hostile
universe, even if our definitions of good and stable are entirely our own and
of no importance to the indifferent vacuum around us. We should reach out to
the stars with purpose other than desperate survival because if that is all we
have to say for ourselves, then what is the point of surviving? Until we can
manage this small patch, how can we be expected to do any better anywhere else?
We don’t need to start over on a new world to get things right, we need to kick
our bad habits in the place where they originated.
If we were to imagine a powerful god-like being presiding over
some patch of the cosmos, looking down upon the present state of humanity, seeing them pushing outwards to infect other worlds with their injustice and appetite for destruction, we could quite reasonably understand this being reaching out and
striking humanity down. Such a being would leave
humanity to try once more to figure out how to balance themselves in their
environment and amongst themselves before they spread their flawed and
destructive ways any further. As far as we know, there is no such being to keep
us in check, so it is up to us to determine when we are ready to head on, and
in this we should be as objective and honest with ourselves as possible. Do we
really believe that we are ready to handle the responsibility of colonizing
other worlds? Is a McDonald’s on every asteroid a legacy that we can be proud
of?
Some protestations I anticipate, such as rejections of my presupposition that humanity can learn what it needs to on terra
firma. There are those who would say that there is no better way to shape
humanity for the better than to expose it to the wild unknown of the universe.
Let humanity take those first fledging steps they say, and we will over time
sort these things out. Worlds with scarce resources will teach us how to manage
what little we have, indeed space travel itself will teach us much they say.
And one cannot underestimate the power of being able to start over, to challenge all of the assumptions that underpin our societies. On new worlds we
would be free to experiment with new ways of living and thinking, and the most
successful strategies would rise to the top and spread across all colonized
systems. It is an idealistic view of universal
expansion: the market of limited resources and long travel distances will sort
out the wheat from the chaff, and in the end humanity will be well on the way
towards becoming a more cooperative and good element in the universe. To such
claims I can respond with historical precedent, as humanity’s expansion into
new territories to solve issues of scarcity is no new thing. The historical
precedent for humanity’s expansion into new domains is hardly a glowing
endorsement of our ability to better manage our resources or control our
appetites. History paints a dark portrait of a viral race that displaces and
consumes until the resources are depleted. Examples abound, from over-fishing
in Atlantic Canada, to deforestation in the Amazon, the discoveries of gold and
oil in North America, the subsequent rushes and eventual dwindling of supply,
fresh-water depletion, the list goes on. One need only visit one’s local
landfill to see the waste and excess of our consumerism: diaper-laden monuments
to our inability to manage our resources in a manner that does not disadvantage
future generations.
References:
The Canadian Press. "Stephen Hawkin: Space Exploration Crucial to Human Survival." The Huffington Post. 18 November 2011. Huffington Post Media Group News. 19 November 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/18/stephen-hawking-space-exploration_n_1101975.html#s485302&title=To_The_Moon>.
Helton, Jordan. "World population reaches 7 billion." GlobalPost. 30 October 2011. Global News Enterprises, LLC. 19 November 2012. <http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/111030/world-population-reaches-7-billion>.
References:
The Canadian Press. "Stephen Hawkin: Space Exploration Crucial to Human Survival." The Huffington Post. 18 November 2011. Huffington Post Media Group News. 19 November 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/11/18/stephen-hawking-space-exploration_n_1101975.html#s485302&title=To_The_Moon>.
Helton, Jordan. "World population reaches 7 billion." GlobalPost. 30 October 2011. Global News Enterprises, LLC. 19 November 2012. <http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/africa/111030/world-population-reaches-7-billion>.
