So maybe that's how a nascent planetary civilization ends

Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver. No one can realistically argue that humans haven’t dramatically transformed the face of the planet. But now scientists propose that humankind has so altered the Earth that that we have brought about an end to one epoch and entered a new age. They suggest humans have so changed the Earth that it’s time the Holocene epoch was officially ended. The new epoch of Earth’s history is being called the Anthropocene, meaning “man-made”.

In 2007, Earth's 6.8 billion humans were living 50 percent beyond the planet's threshold of sustainability, according to its report, issued ahead of a UN biodiversity conference. Even with modest UN projections for population growth, consumption and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption.

Lets face it. Humans just can't live beyond earth for any real length of time unless clad in a radiation proof existence. Duplicating life support systems for beyond earth living to support a useful number could take many decades. We are stuck on terra firma unless there are secret space colony plans, well advanced, as yet not announced. House boat living with hydroponic growing will ease things. Family sized submarines maybe the real estate of the future.

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"There is much we could do to make even 7 billion sustainable on the planet, and the main obstacle are corporations and networks of power and capital which are benefiting mightily from the status quo and are not going to change on their own. But that obstacle looks insurmountable especially in light of the utter silliness of current political campaigns, and the death-wish greed and rampant corruption firmly ensconced in power.

So maybe that's how a nascent planetary civilization ends before it barely begins. While other parameters of the Drake equation have been increasing, the last parameter, the lifetime of a potentially space-faring civilization, seems, in light of our own current experience, to be not necessarily very long. One wonders whether this is an inevitable hurdle in the development of civilizations, or whether it is a peculiar failing of the human narrative on earth."

Stephen Miller . . .


http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/02/ecoalert-urban-sprawl-welcome-to-th...