REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA (Robert Elton Maas) (03/10/86)
K> Date: Sat, 8 Mar 86 14:07:12 EST K> From: "Keith F. Lynch" <KFL@mc.lcs.mit.edu> K> I don't think a 2% growth rate is 'multiplying like flies', 2% per year, per month, or per generation? Per generation, it isn't bad at all. Per month, it's terrible!! Per year, that is 64% per generation (assuming 25 years), which is a considerable increase, a doubling every 35 years. If it takes us 100 years before we develop space habitat, that means instead of 6e9 people we'll have 43e9 people on Earth. Do we want Earth's human population to be that large?? K> and I don't think 10 acres per person is 'devouring all available space'. K> This message seems quite hysterical. Do you hate mankind? Do you K> hate yourself? Are you counting only the land we actually consider our homes, and not the destruction of the Amazon jungle we're forcing to occur now? K> Another reason for going into space is to bring plants and animals K> with us, so that there can be so many more of them over a much wider K> area for a much longer time. In the long run, mankind is the one hope K> of all life on Earth. Maybe, and maybe not. Mankind has the possibility of being the one hope for all life on Earth, if we don't have thermonuclear war before we bootstrap into space habitat, but also the possiblity of ending all life on Earth a little bit prematurely. We don't yet know which is the correct (actual) fate of life on Earth. I think we basically agree, but you mistakenly used words of fact instead of possibility in your misspeak.