Standing on a precipice

I recently read a book [Soonish] which talks about the future, and the promising new technologies which are going to change the world for the good or the bad. Couple of them if they were to happen would result in mankind becoming an inter-planetary species. [One of them seemed a bit outlandish - Space Elevators and the other was reusable rockets]. I shared them casually chatting with a friend – who mocked the idea that it was highly morally irresponsible that billions of $$$$ would be spent to bring a sci-fi concept to reality while millions of lives around the world could be made better with that money. My attempts to placate while presenting the argument of balancing long-term v/s short term did not make headway. While explaining I would admit I had a few doubts myself if it actually was the right thing to do.

However, if you look around closely looks like the world does indeed is facing some ginormous dangers which threaten the existence and warrant that some of us do indeed branch out to some other habitable planet. The doomsday clock which is an indicator of dangers to the world - has been moved to 2 minutes closer to mid-night in 2018. But over the years, it’s perception has been cynical and updates related to it are relegated to the back pages of newspapers and it surely doesn’t figure in the prime time news.

The dangers facing us which has resulted in the clock being moved closer to midnight is I think we have been very lucky with Nuclear Fallout. The attempts to disarm have failed and now there are 16000+ warheads across the globe which are of manifold intensity than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The number of instances where an inadvertent misstep almost happened but for due to moral conscience of some courageous soul or just out of sheer luck – is very fortuitous.  

• ·    Stanislav Petrov
• ·      Vasili Arkhipov
• ·      Damascus, Arkansas
• ·      Norwegian Rocket Incident
• ·     Two midnight calls to National security adviser that 2200 missiles were headed

Even if you go by the ancient myth: cats have only nine lives and even by law of averages some day the coin would not land on heads but teeter and fall over on tails. This is a danger which is going to cause instant decimation and destruction but there is a similar danger which is causing gradual damage as we speak – Climate Change.

It’s beyond understanding how attempts to bring everyone together on this issue have failed. Paris Accord in 2016 was very promising but it has unraveled quickly with the strongest country in the world deserting it. Half of the states sued and the US House refused to support POTUS44’s endorsement of the Paris Accord. No wonder 40-45% of the population feels climate change is a hoax. It’s seemingly implausible for a political candidate to make it their platform. A few of them are trying but we will see how it turns out in 2020. Every day a new study or evidence comes out showing how climate change is causing unheard catastrophes.

And then even if you keep aside these two systemic dangers – you have untenable rising inequality (Capitalism failed?) and unrest. Normally, I am very optimistic but with these looming dangers and the abdication of control by the masses to the “leaders” who have rigged the system for themselves – it looks difficult we will be here for another 2000 years.

So, becoming a space faring specie is a decent option – although it’s obvious that the first tickets will go to the rich as soon as it becomes a reasonable possibility who will then tailor a system there as well. But then I hope that’d be a good-to-have problem in another 50 years?