pugh@topaz.ARPA (08/05/85)
From: "pugh jon%e.mfenet"@LLL-MFE.ARPA I thank Ron Cain for pointing out the need for mankind to grow up, but I suspect that many of us realize our imperfections are overwhelming us. We need to be able to turn this wonderful world into the paradise that is was before we started to pollute it into a scum planet. I do not intend to abandon this planet (heck, I'm not even going to be able to leave, there's no room for hackers on the shuttle), nor do I think it possible to live without the earth for eons to come. Ron considers the harnessing of energy to be our greatest concern and he is correct in a limited sense (but then isn't everything?). With an abundant source and control of energy we should be able to grow enough food and distribute it to save all the priceless lives that are going to waste every day. With enough energy we can turn around the rise of pollution and make the water clean again. With energy we can leave home for a vacation or for good, and someone will want to. Heck I want to go on vacation to Saturn right now. A problem may be that if we can turn our beautiful little ball of dirt into the paradise we all love, then who is going to leave? There is enough humanity to pursue the exploration and colonization of space *and* to work on fixing up our home *and* to solve every technological problem we can. Look at the duplication going on in the space program! The USSR is doing things that we have done and vice versa. If one of us would give up that task and settle down to solving the hunger problem, we could lick it. But we are too immature and worried about the other guy. So we end up fighting and fretting and carrying on discussions like this one. But what can we do? It takes a great number of people to achieve any real results these days, although the individual effort now seems to come from the organizers. A Nobel award to the guy who organized Live Aid? He deserves it, but even more so do the millions who contributed. Can the same thing be done for pollution before it kills us all? There is no way we can abandon the earth. We cannot take all the people off planet no matter what. I am speaking of exporting an active gene pool. This activity itself will assist us to make our world what it should be. We can remove the polluting activities to places that are less noticable (can you pollute an asteroid?) and bring only the benefits to our home. I suspect that the only safe and efficient place to generate the energy we need will be in space, and it will be a coexistance of space living and planet living that will keep mankind alive over the eons. Like Robert Heinlein said, the earth is too fragile a basket for us to keep all our eggs in. Jon Pugh pugh%e@lll-mfe.arpa