Re:Screw the Mars hype. Here's why we should move to Venus
by ncmncm on Thursday November 12, 2020 @02:03AM
(#25067247)
Climate change is not a threat to local civilization, but is a very definite threat to global civilization. 30-50 years may be radically over-optimistic.
Worldwide, governments are responding to the crisis in almost perfectly maladaptive ways. As hundreds of millions of refugees are barely beginning take flight, fascist governments are arising to keep them out of temperate zones, tending ultimately toward global war. Certainly, pockets will survive, but global civilization, as such, is much less secure.
While climate change is super-important, and we absolutely need to do whatever we can to negate it, it is not a threat to global civilization.
Even if the effects of climate change are orders of magnitude worse than we expect, the planet most suitable for human life will remain Earth. Because, um, we can breathe the air, drink the water and the temperature is within the ranges we easily tolerate. (not to even get into issues of magnetic fields etc)
Will the earth of the future support 7 billion people? Probably yes, possibly no, but whatever number it does support will forever dwarf the people living in venus or mars.
Will our "civilisation" look different 50 years from now? Undoubtedly yes. But it's radically changed in the last 50,100 and 150. Certainly those times counted as civilised did they not?
There will be civilisations on earth for a long long time (baring nuclear anialation) - our adaptability (think Sahara /Siberia) is, if anything, a little too aggressive.