Is making humans an interplanetary species destroying biodiversity and climate stability? |
Can we engage dialectically in what is emerging as a great bifurcation? To Elon Musk, and all who support his goal of making humans an interplanetary species, what real efforts are being made to ensure pursuing this goal is not perpetuating activities that are already wiping out biodiversity and climate stability? With your response the great bifurcation rests at the edge of inevitability. Elon Musk's idea of humans being an interplanetary species assumes resources can be managed equitably, between saving the human species -through technological capacity to colonize Mars- and saving the human spiritual connection with Earth, by managing resources to stabilize the climate and restore biodiversity. But these goals are based on fundamentally different sets of values. A great bifurcation is inevitable because one goal demands technical solutions based on natural resource extraction, and the other goal requires spiritual fulfillment and dramatically reduced consumption of natural resources. Only with some means of negotiating resource management can both goals be achieved. Shotwell said SpaceX is not concerned with saving the planet. Apparently other people are working on that. But how do we know that the continuous funneling of natural resources into technology, via the industrial economy, will not cripple the future our human spiritual connection with earth. |