The
number of serious problems confronting the world at large today
continues to grow, and become ever more difficult to manage with each
passing day. The human race seems to be having a full-scale adolescent
style crisis. If we do not soon emerge in fair shape, we may face
something much worse than a worldwide depression -- a new Dark Ages.
How long that would last and to what depths we might sink, dragging our
host biosphere with us, cannot be known.
Population growth is
outstripping our ability to access available resources at the standard
of living levels with which we in the Developed World have become all
too comfortable. Maintaining energy use at customary levels and
maintaining the present state of “health” of the environment are
beginning to look like either-or choices.
Poverty is on the rise
in many areas, even in First World Nations. There is no end to a list
of pressing top level concerns. Solutions requiring investment in one
area, make investment in other areas harder to support. Are we caught
in an “end of times” downward
spiral?
I think we need to
take a look at just who we are, just where we came from, how we fit
into the scheme of things as a people. If we can get a better insight
into these things, we will have made a big step in putting the problems
in the right context to begin to see solutions.
Most people
consider our planet to be the only context in which we can understand
our origins, our present history, and our future. One hears remarks
such as “we need to find solutions to terrestrial problems right here
on our home world, not out there somewhere.” Well, quite frankly, it’s
too late for that. Our “home world” was Africa, and modern man has been
on the move to wher-ever our developing technology would take us for at
least 80,000 years. Our world used to be flat, but now we all consider
it global. While few realize it, when man first set footsteps on
another world, the “world” as a continuum of human horizons shattered
that global limit forever; with that first step we became children of
the Sun.
On every new frontier, we faced a new set of
resources, of food sources, of climate conditions, of life-threatening
dangers. Each time our great resourcefulness earned us the comfort of
becoming “at home” in previ-ously unforgiving, danger-fraught alien
territory.
Backup a few steps to the real "Genesis." Of all the
various elements of which our bodies are composed, only hydrogen is
primeval. [Primeval helium is not found in living tissues, biochemical
molecules, and substances.] All the higher elements have been forged in
the interiors of stars which, at the end of their lifetimes, have
exploded as “novas” scattering their enriched debris throughout the
universe. It is from such “salted” gas and dust clouds that new stars
began to form with attendant rocky worlds.
Genesis has it only half right. It should read,
“Of stardust thou art,
And to the stars thou shalt return.”
Too
many people think of Mother Earth alone. But where would we be without
the Sun's light and warmth! Where would the Sun be without the
countless older larger stars that ended their lives in a life-giving
explosion? The Sun is but the most locally prominent part of Father
Sky. Mother Earth and Father Sky are an inseparable pair. Together they constitute the holistic human environment.
Without both, our existence and subsistence would be unthinkable. Nor
can it be under-stood, preserved, enhanced, have a trans-adolescent
future. We are children not just of Earth, not just of the Solar
System, but of the Universe. “Mother Nature” is more comprehensive than “Mother Earth.”
In
that context, the suggestion that all solutions to our problems must be
found here on Earth is not only wrong, but ignorant, stupid,
self-defeating. Frankly, it is doctrinaire smelling of “orthodoxy.”
Looking
outward, the Moon shares Earth’s orbit about the Sun. It is ours, a
hinterland continent with resources for us to access and use. It is
Earth’s “pantry”.
Yes, we have major energy, environmental,
and social problems, all complexly interlinked. If accessing resources
from space can help in any useful way in dealing with these crises,
then assertions that we should look beneath our feet for all solutions
becomes a cult of ignorance. And beyond the Moon are other
resource-rich bodies, the asteroids, comets, and everything else in our
Sun’s considerable family.
Now the Environment seen as Earth
alone, is clearly susceptible to the exponentially increasing effects
of inhabitation by an excreting technological species. But what about
the Environment seen as including “Father Sky?” The Solar System is, by
terrestrial standards, very vast. Is it possible that we could in any
sense pollute that larger ecosphere? Perhaps. Extensive use of mass
drivers used to move small bodies such as asteroids, if the exit
velocity were to be within a certain velocity range, could create
small, limited but dangerous streams of pressure vessel-rupturing shot.
Our possible negative effects on the solar environment are, however,
hard to assess at this time. Let us hope our successors will be on
alert.
On the positive side, Earth Life will accompany us as
we spread the continuum of our presence beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
Sure, we could process some sort of Solyent Green nutrient to make it
unnecessary to bring with us sustaining plant life. I will be most
happy to have lived out my life in this “more primitive” age in such a
case. The oasis of life that sustains us, is, in our opinion, not
something to be outgrown.
Do we share the Universe
Looking
out further, while the Moon seems to be barren, sterile, Mars may or
may not be. But at best, any Martian life is stunted at a very low rung
up the ladder of life. Around Jupiter, Europa’s extensive ice covered
global ocean hides mysteries about which we can as yet only wonder. The
same may be so for other ice-covered moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
We
know of advanced multicellular structured life forms only here on
Earth. Are we alone? As mammals? as intelligent environment-modifying
creatures? Many easy, flippant answers display an incredible ignorance
of how very vast the universe is, not only in space, but also in time.
No matter how rare “other” fertile “earths” may be percentage wise --
e.g. “one in a billion” -- the universe is so vast that there must be
hundreds, even thousands of billions of other civilizations throughout
quadrillions of cubic light years and through the most recent two
thirds of the time since our universe seems to have come of age. That
said, our nearest “contemporary” neighbor might lie beyond the
distance in both space and time within which there could be any
meaningful interaction or exchange.
At any rate, it is most likely that the Universe is multiply fertile on a grand scale.
Humans and the Universe?
“Go
and fill the world” in this expanded sense, begins to take on an
interstellar connotation. Technology may limit us to much less than
that. Some worlds will be able to support native born flowerings of
life such as has Earth. Others may be able to support the beginnings of
life, but not allow it to get much further. Others still may have all
the needed resources but not the environmental conditions. Some grand
beginnings will occur on planets whose suns are too short-lived to
allow the full flowering such as that has happened here on Earth.
And
there perhaps is our ultimate Genesis mission: to sow life where it
could not have arisen on its own; to advance life where local
conditions have held its evolution in check; to speed up evolution
where the local Sun may be too short-lived. See “Welcome-Mat Worlds”,
MMM #45, May 1991, reprinted in MMM Classic #5, pp. 25-28 – at http://www.moonsociety.org/publications/mmm_classics/
It
is not mankind that is called to return home to the stars, but
Earthlife, Gaia herself. Earth-life cannot reproduce itself elsewhere
on its own. Thus, with no apology to those whom the following makes
them squeamish, an intelligent dominant species can be seen as the
reproductive organ of its planetary Biosphere. Through us alone, can
Earth-life, Gaia, Mother Earth spread beyond its current limits. Father
Sky calls us to this pilgrimage home. It calls us to fulfill the
destiny of Mother Earth, and in the process tap full endowments of the
Mother Earth - Father Sky union, to save Mother Earth from the ill
effects of our technological adolescence. Someday, when our
civilization has become more adult, we will be Solarians, children of
the Solar System.
As noted, our species is not originally
“Terran” but African. We have been on an epic journey of expan-sion to
one frontier after another. To stop now, in the belief that the world
cannot be more than round, a belief as mistaken as the one that held
the world to be flat, would be to turn our backs on ourselves, on our
origins, on our destiny. We must not hide our light under the basket of
Earth’s defining atmosphere. We must continue to develop the depths of
our given talents. We can only do that by accepting the challenge to
keep pioneering new frontiers. What other way to continue to give
praise and glory to the creative forces which have forged us?
Those
of us who want to look outwards for help with Earth’s intractable
problems, are environmentalists too. But we see “environment” as a much
larger bi-parental context. Our origin is on flat plains of Africa. Our
destination is wherever our pilgrimage to keep on exploring our hidden
given potential will take us. "Of Stardust thou art, to the Stars you
shalt return."
Mother Earth is not a spinster but wed to Father Sky.
Her terrestrial brood is but the first. We must reject the demands for
terrestrial solutions to terrestrial problems. We must educate others
to the much vaster space-time context in which we have come into being,
and within which our future lies. Our Environmentalism must be holistic to be effective. <MMM>