iamahh wrote:But it is what it is, cause we need that new toy made of plastic, oil, thousands of man hours, minerals, and whatever gets in the way gets rekt.
While I agree with your sentiment, I'm going to assume you're not posting this with an 8088 processor.... or even a Pentium 4.
Jalpha wrote:I think this is one of the biggest arguments for why we should be leaving Earth. We have poisoned our environment and now we are poisoning ourselves. Nature doesn't care. Nature will survive. In a hundred thousand years new species will arise to dominate the toxic environment which we can no longer survive.
We've been poisoning ourselves since the end of the tool age. it just didn't really move the needle until we figured out how to make steel.
Jalpha wrote:Imagine if we do survive long enough to encounter another sentient species in the galaxy. Imagine if they ask us about our home planet. Imagine how they would regard us if we had to explain that we turned our home planet into a toxic wasteland. If I were them I wouldn't want us in the neighbourhood.
Anyone more advanced than us will either have done the same thing in their history to become a spacefaring society, or they'll be actively doing it with every planet they colonize. Look at the societies that advanced in science over the centuries. They have all been powermongers looking for something to give an advantage, and scientific progress was almost always a major factor in who survived and who didn't.