How do you survive and thrive on a self-contained spaceship? If you had no resources other than what were carried on the ship, traveling through deepest space, what would be needed to maintain a healthy environment? What would you do with your waste? How would you use your limited resources in the most efficient way?
Would you dispose of bodily waste in your drinking/cooking water? Would you toss used items, broken things, out of date things out into space? Or create a trash pile that grew bigger and bigger as you threw away more things? Until there was nothing left with which to make replacements?
How would you power your space ship and all the machinery that would be required? Would you use a finite source of energy that would eventually run out? Would you pipe the emissions back into your living space to pollute the limited air that you need to survive?
Would you breed continually until your ship was so crowded that people turned against each other and only a few were able to afford to live well by force of arms?
Would your space ship survive if you allowed these things to happen? Or would it become a lifeless toxic waste after a period of time, unable to support life?
Essentially this is what we're doing to our world. It is a space ship. A very large one to be sure. But still finite. 6.8 billion people and growing by millions each day, are turning this world into a toxic waste. The pressures of population growth, resource depletion, and pollution are already increasing regional conflicts. Our economic system encourages the destruction of our space ship world. We are destroying that upon which we depend. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the resources we need to live above a primitive level, are being destroyed and misused in the name of profit.
Population control measures need to be initiated world wide. The petroleum economy needs to be abandoned. Global corporations need to be reined in and have strict controls placed on them in order to reduce their abuses against peoples, the environment and civilized laws. 100% literacy should be pursued throughout the world. Education is key to reducing poverty rates, religious fundamentalism, and population growth.
For a very good read about much the same thing try David Korten's Agenda For a New Economy.
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There was an article about a couple who was going to live a 100% recyclable lifestyle, and end up at the end of 1 year with only a small plastic bag worth of actual 'garbage'. The feat seemed daunting, but it sparked an interest that links nicely with your post. Could it theoretically be possible to have all of those facilities onboard the space ship (you never mentioned any quantifying SIZE of said vessle), you could reproduce the conditions necessary to sustain life and produce a very minimalistic yet attainable carbon footprint.
ReplyDeleteBodily waste is obviously of another concern, I haven't quite worked out a 'pleasant' way of disposing or recycling your own feces (perhaps fertilization comes to mind, to grow plants and promote a form of photosynthesis, creating oxygen for the populace to breathe).
Back to your point though; population control. Interestingly enough, if the populace controls were already in place, you could have in fact, never been born at all. And unfortunately the world and society has to garner everything with a quantifiable worth, thus where currency comes in. Who would pay for all of your 6.8 billion world population's educational fees and resources. Daunting task indeed. Perhaps education is the key, but I think that as of right now, that goal is still strictly unattainable. To address the profit involved with the resources provided in rendering such services, would those be classified as having no worth, and be essentially some twisted form of communism where the world is goverened by a centralized government, or even worse, a monarch? I don't think I need to point out that historically these types of governments failed with the same insights as you present here.
Do I disagree? No, not at all. But do I agree either? Not exactly. Perhaps there is a hidden factor neither of us are seeing?