[extropy-chat] ex-tropical

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Sun Feb 29 21:04:50 UTC 2004


On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 02:45:02PM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> > primarily from famine?  Earth is more likely to be depopulated by mass 
> > emigration to off-Earth living facilities than by famine.

While we have it soft, we shouldn't forget that our parents and grandparents
did witness death from war, famine and disease first-person. Given the time-travel similiarity
of geograpic travel, quite a few areas of the world are still experiencing
that first-hand.

Nowadays, death and pestilence usually tags along with war, but we shouldn't assume that
somehow, magically, we're immune to the whole of it.
 
> This is ludicrous.  The Hunger Project reports that 20,000 people die every
> day from hunger.  Other statistics claim this is as high as 35,000 people
> per day.  You really expect thousands of people to be leaving earth *per
> day* in the foreseeable future?  I don't.

Thanks for providing a reality check. The launch capacities might be there,
but there's nothing to travel to. To make it worse, no one is even doing
research on long-term stable closed-loop ecosystems for human life support.

We're not a space-travelling culture. Repeat after me: we're not a
space-travelling culture. 

We'd better learn to become one, quick.

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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