The longer that we are confined to earth the greater the chance life will be snuffed out. So, a sense of urgency for getting off planet is a good thing
Turkey Think is Everywhere
The turkey has a wonderful life. Every day it is fed and protected from predators. Based on this life experience it anticipates a happy life. But one day, in November the turkey is murdered, plucked, and roasted.
Sadly, the turkey didn’t account for unknown events — these unpredictable events are called Black Swans — beyond it’s life experience. It didn’t think about what happened to grandpa. It didn’t think about why the humans were treating it so nicely.
We are just like the turkey; we scoff at global pandemics, super volcano’s, rogue asteroids, and numerous other human versions of Thanksgiving. And these are just the events we can see! These are called Grey Rhinos.
What might the Black Swans be?
This is a problem, the largest that exists for human civilization and life by extension because many events require massive preparation. Like preparing for winter but orders of magnitude greater in scope. You can’t solve problems like a super volcano erupting by waiting for it to happen and then reacting — despite how predominant that strategy is 😛.
If we are to level up as a species we need to come together and think on geologic time scales. Time scales the universe operates on — so that we can truly appreciate tail risk.
Our turkey mindset works well for our daily lives. But we need foresight at the collective level so that we can plant seeds and create reserves ahead of global disaster.
A Sense of Urgency
So, Black Swans, and even Gray Rhinos (together with Chaos Theory) tell us that Earth could die at any moment. Seriously.
That is indisputable fact.
10% of species are lost every million years, 30% every 10 million years, and 65% every 100 million years.
Chaos Theory tells us that it is impossible to predict these sorts of domino effects in complex systems like sand piles, earthquakes, wars, and avalanches. We have no idea when the next major extinction level event will happen on our own planet i.e. WW3, super volcano, etc.
This big time scale gives us the illusion that we have plenty of time, but thats not how statistics work. Every day we spin the roulette wheel. Extinction could happen back to back or not at all.
What we do know is that every moment of peace causes an uptick in probability of these events as instabilities accrue.
The Death of Earth is Inevitable
It’s a fact that Earth is default dead.
Outside of geologic and social disaster, which we could conceivably mitigate, there are many ways that Earth can end suddenly. Events like a rogue neutron star, asteroid, or a giant solar flare. If nothing else, in a few billion years the sun will expand and roast the planet.
There is no way to prevent this long tail of risks. We could minimize war by providing abundance to all. We could deal with super volcanoes with massive projects to release pressure in a controlled way and so on. But it’s impossible to prevent all disaster. Only one world ending disaster needs to happen.
At the end of the day a planet is a a cradle. A good place to grow up but not the endpoint. It’s simply too vulnerable to be a good long term spaceship.
Conservation is a Bridge
Should we sacrifice all in the pursuit of progress? Poison the planet, ignore emissions, slaughter the penguins?
No of course not. Space is simply long term conservation. In other words, while we prepare for winter (domesticating space) it’s necessary to drive off the wolves in the sheep pen (safeguarding earth).
Space won’t be developed overnight and any extinctions now are forever. We need to protect life and 99% of mankind should be dedicated to this mission.
But given the torch of life in the universe could be snuffed out at any moment, sooner is better than later.
So, let’s stop thinking like turkey’s. Let’s start making global multi-century plans. Perhaps we can start by putting more resources into going to space — it’s a tiny amount right now, on the order of 0.1% of GDP. Let’s put it to 1%. A marginal impact on the world and likely to drive progress and therefore abundance. Plus, it’ll show the universe we are smarter than turkey’s.