I love space. I am very glad that people are exploring space, and I am even satisfied that the Americans want to return to the moon. Space is a vast frontier of scientific discoveries that are waiting in the wings; we have a chance to explore the mysteries of the universe and learn more about ourselves. But what space is not and never will be, is the key to saving our species. And yet, this statement - that we need to boldly conquer the last frontier to save humanity and, possibly, even the Earth itself - has become the main dogma of a certain cohort of technological brothers dreaming of space.
What Jeff Bezos wants to do with the Earth
In 2016, Elon Musk presented his vision of creating a permanent human presence on Mars, describing a project to transform humanity into a "multi-planetary species" as the best and only way to insure us against extinction. Just last week, Jeff Bezos took up this line of thought in a 50-minute speech purportedly intended to announce the new Blue Origin lunar ship. In reality, this speech was a broad overview of Bezos's vision of freeing humanity from the shackles of the limited resources of the blue planet.
Quickly walking through poverty, hunger, homelessness, pollution and overfishing as “pressing and pressing issues,” Bezos revealed to the crowd the real crisis facing humanity.
The earth, says the creator of Amazon, will end up divided into zones of "residential and light industry," while all the most harmful industries will go beyond the blue glow of our planet.
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“Let's kill two birds with one stone,” Bezos said. Let's save the Earth for future generations, and humanity will not have to give up "future dynamism and growth."
Where Jeff Bezos Goes Wrong
All of this sounds very exciting, and there is nothing that the Silicon Valley billionaire loves more than techno-optimism. But shouldn't we think one step ahead, at least a little? Shouldn't we be trying to figure out how we can live sustainably on a single planet that supports human life before thinking about how to recreate a million pocket versions of it in a cold, dark void?
Bezos brushed aside many 21st century problems as solved, but now these are real crises that real people face. Unless we take control of rampant climate change and figure out how to prevent the extinction of a million species, there is a real chance that we will never come close to making the most of the Earth's "limited resources" because - well, how would - we dead.
But we have not come close to the depletion of earthly resources. Bezos practically admits it when he casually remarks that we can turn the whole of Nevada into a solar farm and power all businesses from it. The US Department of Energy has calculated that the winds blowing off the coast of the United States have enough energy to power every American home. The rare earth metals that we mine to support this energy transition are abundantly available in the earth's crust, and although we can currently only access small pockets of them, developing new sources on Earth or improving our own technologies to use them more efficiently will be much more reasonable decisions than mining the same metals on the rings of Saturn. We could channel some of the resources needed to develop O'Neill's cylinders,on a powerful program of thermonuclear energy and in a hundred years to supply all cities with sea water.
Maybe Bezos could even invest some of the resources that Amazon is currently using to automate oil production?
And let's not forget that the most important and limited resource of all is found on Earth and nowhere else: biodiversity. We cannot exist without the intricate and delicate web of life of which our species is a part - all these trillions of microorganisms that support and recycle nutrients in the soil and sea, plants that produce oxygen and food for us, countless species that have helped us create new drugs or technology. We have not yet figured out how to keep all this biodiversity on Earth from extinction, but are we going to try to create it from scratch in a vacuum?
Our species is currently playing God on easy difficulty and losing. Distracting yourself from the planet with water and oxygen, which is in the Goldilocks zone of our solar system, will not make the situation easier - on the contrary, it will make it a hell of a lot more difficult.
One day we will go beyond the Earth and it will be incredibly cool. But this planet will always be our home. And we need to figure out how to keep it livable before we venture elsewhere. If we lose him, there will be no replay.
Ilya Khel