Why colonise space? The long view
Date Created: 2021/09/24
Simply put: what else are we going to do?
Human civilisation has progressed mightily in the last 3,000 years. If you fast forward, say another 10,000 years further, what will we be doing?
- Humans could be extinct
- Civilisation could have broken down, we could have regressed to small and medium-sized squabbling kingdoms doing subsistence agriculture
- The world becomes overcrowded, and there are frequent wars over access to resources and birth rates. Individuals have a generally low standard of living. Societies have to impose strict birth limits. High rates of death from wars and starvation also help to keep the population down.
- World population has been stabilised, again through strict birth rate limits, but at a level which allows a good standard of living without putting too much pressure on the planet. Economic growth is 0 in resource and energy usage terms, although new ideas and inventions can still continue to make improvements.
Or, we could start to colonise space.
It is about constraints. If we stay on Earth, then we have strict constraints on resource and energy usage, and hence population numbers. What are the consequences of this?
History shows that family size reduces as wealth increases. An affluent society with a stable population size therefore does not conflict with human desires or economic realities and could be maintained without repressive societal rules on birth rates.