Survival guilt
What if humanity handily survives the death of the biosphere? What if we sustain ourselves with vat-grown yeast and algae and live in Asimov's Caves of Steel beneath a nearly lifeless landscape, with the blood of trillions or quadrillions of creatures on our hands?
It seems like it should be said that this would be worse than letting the human race die that the biosphere may live, but I can't say it. It's too hard to give up the notion that Intelligence, Technology, and Civilization are somehow more important that Life, to say nothing of simple species loyalty. And there are attractive excuses: without some kind of intelligent intervention, everything on Earth will surely die as the sun gets hotter; wouldn't that be worse than a mass extinction now, from which the biosphere may eventually recover?
So our task is to fight for a third alternative, to convince people that the human cost of the Caves of Steel is too high or the risk of failure too great, that we must either continue to depend on the biosphere or separate ourselves from it before we do any more damage. The latter solution is next to impossible to implement, so the real alternative we have to choose is learning to live with nature rather than against it.
(originally posted December 24, 2003)
It seems like it should be said that this would be worse than letting the human race die that the biosphere may live, but I can't say it. It's too hard to give up the notion that Intelligence, Technology, and Civilization are somehow more important that Life, to say nothing of simple species loyalty. And there are attractive excuses: without some kind of intelligent intervention, everything on Earth will surely die as the sun gets hotter; wouldn't that be worse than a mass extinction now, from which the biosphere may eventually recover?
So our task is to fight for a third alternative, to convince people that the human cost of the Caves of Steel is too high or the risk of failure too great, that we must either continue to depend on the biosphere or separate ourselves from it before we do any more damage. The latter solution is next to impossible to implement, so the real alternative we have to choose is learning to live with nature rather than against it.
(originally posted December 24, 2003)