Has anyone considered the following historic/ecological irony?
Asked by
davidk (
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December 10th, 2009
There will be a point when the earth is enveloped by the sun. In the last stages of our star’s existence, it will expand to become a Red Giant—some 5.5 billion years from now. All life as we know it will be eradicated long before the sun starts to cool down again as it burns itself out and becomes a White Dwarf.
This is certainly Global Warming on a massive scale…but I digress.
Anyway…If humanity had been content to live in harmony with our natural environment, our technical prowess would approximate that of the Neolithic Age.
The technical progress achieved up to this point in human history (2009) rests squarely on a massive pile of trash and the destruction of nature. Start thinking about the literal trash-in-the-aggregate and pollution that every step of human technical progress has generated and you’ll get what I mean. After all, when you consider your cell phone for a moment, you will realize that its existence is not simply dependent upon technology and industry currently extant. Rather, the cell phone is one example of nearly countless technologies that depend on a long and diverse historic trail of previous technological steps—all of which produced pollution and various forms of environmental damage.
This same technology has allowed humans to see the damage and potential damage and create the scientific tools to predict the life cycle of the sun, for instance. Without it, this discussion would not even be taking place!
It is a strange thing indeed to contemplate the fact that we would have had no chance of survival, ZERO, as a species, if we had continued living as a Neolithic creature—relatively “in harmony with nature.” However, that massive pile of trash has given us a chance at getting the hell off this rock and going elsewhere BEFORE the sun turns into a Red Giant.
A weird dilemma, huh?
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12 Answers
5.5 billion years from now? Not my problem.
Who says we couldn’t have survived if we continued to live as Neolithic creatures?
Interesting! And if we never get off this rock? Well at least Voyager is floating around in space with some of our awesomeness to date, to be potentially discovered by future species from some distant star possibly!
@MissAnthrope Because, in time, the Sun is going to destroy everything.
@anon – I reread the statement and I understand now. :)
I don’t know.. I have been thinking about this and to me, it is just the natural cycle of things. However, I have a more zoological concept of humans than most. Perhaps it’s just the way things are meant to be. Our planet gets destroyed, another is created, or perhaps another reaches the stage of maturity that ours did eons ago and life might spring up there much as it did here.
It’s part of being human, wanting to manipulate the environment or to prevent bad things from happening. The way I see it, we’re just another animal inhabiting the planet. If our solar system has an expiration date, that’s it. It’s a bit sad that we have the intelligence to foresee this disaster, but it’s nature.
@MissAnthrope Maybe the universe (or are we calling it the multiverse now? I can’t keep up with science) has a similar cycle and eventually, no matter where the human race calls home, we’re all going to be wiped out anyway?
I say anything is possible!
Mankind will either be thousands of years extinct or off the planet way before the sun engulfs us.
by that time we will be able to fly the planet like a spaceship to another sun.
@ChazMaz “Mankind will either be thousands of years extinct or off the planet way before the sun engulfs us.”
Yes, we will be extinct…or we will have figured out a way to survive. The invention and creation of any technology advanced enough to help us escape any sort of mass extinction is likely to be damaging to the environment. Then again, once the world is inhospitable due to natural causes beyond our control, what will it matter what damage we have done?
I think there is an immutable truth here:
Humanities’ capacity to create has been, is, and always will be, equal to our destructive capacity.
I agree with Holden on this one.
Let’s face it, if we want to take the not my problem because I’ll be dead line, the same logic could apply to 100 years from now.
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