Going back in time what would you have changed to improve the planet?

[I Have Hippos In My Garden]

If you could travel back in time and change one thing to change the planet for the better, what would it be?

I'm not sure how to describe this eloquently but I would like to equalise the world's climate. I'm not necessarily saying to get rid of natural disasters because we have learnt so much from them and good things do come from them, like the amazing soil volcanoes give the surrounding areas. However on a day to day basis I would like there to be less flooding and less drought to enable a better crop production, better sanitation and a more reliable infrastructure around all areas of the world.

Also, perhaps to prevent the existence of mosquitoes and thus prevent malaria.

[LSLGuy]

I suspect the thing which would improve the planet the most would be to prevent the evolution of humans. We shoulda been super-bonobos, not super-chimps. The world would be a much nicer place both for us and the rest of the flora and fauna.

[billfish678]

put all the oil somewhere else

[Captain Amazing]

Originally Posted by LSLGuy

We shoulda been super-bonobos, not super-chimps.

We're neither. We're equally related to chimps and bonobos.

[PunditLisa]

I would have kept oil prices up long enough in the 70s that we would have had no choice but to seek out alternate energies. Solar and wind energy was just beginning to gain momentum when oil prices collapsed. And that proved to be dangerous not just for the earth physically, but for the stability of humans living on earth.

[HumanMonkeyGod]

Originally Posted by I Have Hippos In My Garden

Also, perhaps to prevent the existence of mosquitoes and thus prevent malaria.

Couldn't you just... get rid of malaria? Not that I'm making a case for mozzies but yeah.

I would've done what was necessary to prevent wiping dinosaurs out. They would've grown huge brains and the world would now be occupied by civilized stegosauruses and epidexipteryxes. Yes that's right, erudite epidexipteryxes!

[palindromemordnilap]

I would have put billions of dollars into research on solar power instead of nuclear back in the 50s and 60s, funded by a high tax on gasoline and coal.

Also, DDT should never have been permitted. Even though it's been banned in the U.S. for 35 years, detectable levels are still found in 85% of all milk samples. (It was good for reducing malaria though.)

[davekhps]

Depends on how far I can go back.

I mean, there's always the "save the Kaiser/shoot Marx dead/drown Hitler in his crib" sort of deals, but the alternative realities that result from those may make today look very different in a way not so agreeable to us (i.e., if I kill Marx, Lenin or Stalin, does Hitler still show up but now rules the world? If I kill Hitler, does Soviet Communism take over all of Europe? Etc. etc.).

If I could go back a few hundred years, perhaps I'd sit down with the Framers of the U.S. Constitution and give them some friendly advice (junk that slavery deal now, write down the 2nd Amendment pretty clearly, put in a explicit right to privacy IF THAT'S WHAT YOU REALLY WANT, and for God's sake, please strengthen the 10th Amendment to prevent Washington from having all the freakin' power :-).

But, if I only could go back a little bit? I would go back to 1979, shut off the right switch at Three Mile Island, and prevented the anti-nuclear power hysteria that's kept America from pursuing *realistic* energy independence. No more of this imaginary solar & wind power we've been wishing for now for decades, but *real* power, the kind that had we pursued in the 1980s and 1990s would have left us in a far better place today instead of the stupid circular debates we keep having.

[davekhps]

Originally Posted by palindromemordnilap

I would have put billions of dollars into research on solar power instead of nuclear back in the 50s and 60s, funded by a high tax on gasoline and coal.

Also, DDT should never have been permitted. Even though it's been banned in the U.S. for 35 years, detectable levels are still found in 85% of all milk samples. (It was good for reducing malaria though.)

Ha, funny that I posted right after you. Which I guess means that I now have to go back in time and stop YOU from wasting all of our time, money and resources on pursuing solar energy and allowing millions of people to die of malaria because some author thought thin eggshells were a bigger thing to worry about than dying people.

[Phlosphr]

The problem is -civilization was leveled with substances and technologies that were harmful well before we even knew they were harmful [e.g. DDT] or knew they would have a long term hazardous effects.

I wouldn't want to eliminate technology, but I may wish to eliminate the human desire for domination. We will kill ourselves off this planet well before the sun fizzles out. Without the desire for domination, humans would have adapted differently to the landscape.

[Emily Litella]

I would have tried to stop the Industrial Revolution, but I don't know how. Getting more support for the Luddites and Phillip Morris's Arts & Crafts movement may have helped, but how do you get everybody on board when there are industrial profits to be made? Get rid of all the industrialists?

[LSLGuy]

Originally Posted by Captain Amazing

We're neither. We're equally related to chimps and bonobos.

I don't have the knowledge to debate the genetics, but attitudinally humans are a lot closer to the agressive warrior chimps than the free-love bonobos.

Which was the point I was trying to make.

[astorian]

Originally Posted by LSLGuy

I suspect the thing which would improve the planet the most would be to prevent the evolution of humans. We shoulda been super-bonobos, not super-chimps. The world would be a much nicer place both for us and the rest of the flora and fauna.

You don't know as much about bonobos as you think. They are NOT the sweet, peaceful, sexually progressive, content, cuddly creatures of myth.

[gotpasswords]

I'd go back to 1935 or so and prevent the passage of the Public Utility Holding Act of 1935, which forced the divestiture of streetcar lines and shoehorned neatly into General Motors' desires to rip up streetcar lines and replace them with people driving their own cars.

GM was also a pioneer of the then-new concept of city planning. Not surprisingly, they did all they could to convince everyone that streetcars and trains were bad, but buses and cars (both conveniently available from GM) were good.

We (and the planet) woud be a lot better off if we had more inter-urban mass transit and fewer cars.

[Der Trihs]

One thing ? Fiddle with human nature so that religion never arises.

[MrDibble]

Originally Posted by LSLGuy

I suspect the thing which would improve the planet the most would be to prevent the evolution of humans.

This gets my vote. I even know when to go back to.

Originally Posted by LSLGuy

We shoulda been super-bonobos, not super-chimps.

As has been pointed out, this is not very scientifically accurate. Bonobos hunt actively, just like P. troglodytes, and are as capable of violence as any other Pan (Including Pan sapiens, yours truly). Plus, most bonobo studies are on artificial environments (either zoos or reserves), so we can't say with too much certainty how hippie they would be in an unpoiled, human-free environment.

[LSLGuy]

Ignorance fought. Thank you.

[slaphead]

Originally Posted by davekhps

allowing millions of people to die of malaria because some author thought thin eggshells were a bigger thing to worry about than dying people.

How about you both compromise and encourage the targeted use of DDT as a local insecticide around people's houses as an alternative to firstly dumping metric assloads of it willy-nilly into the environment in order to boost agricultural output (thereby encouraging evolution of DDT-resistance in insect populations, as well as poisoning many other species) and then later banning it in a knee-jerk reaction?

Personally I'd like to fiddle with human nature so that people don't expect to see clear instant easy answers to every problem, but instinctively recognise that most things will resolve trade-offs and are likely to have unexpected consequences.

[Sailboat]

Originally Posted by slaphead

How about you both compromise and encourage the targeted use of DDT as a local insecticide around people's houses as an alternative to firstly dumping metric assloads of it willy-nilly into the environment in order to boost agricultural output (thereby encouraging evolution of DDT-resistance in insect populations, as well as poisoning many other species) and then later banning it in a knee-jerk reaction?

I recently read (as in, it was in the news within the last few weeks) that some scientists now believe the DDT ban may have made it MORE effective for fighting episodic malaria outbreaks,but cannot now find an online citation. The thinking is that the DDT ban prevented insects from building up resistance and it could still be used locally in a short-term crisis.

There's no question that dumping large quantities of DDT into the environment is bad, period -- people who believe it should be used indiscriminately are simply reacting emotionally to a perceived defeat of their political inclination, not thinking scientifically.

Here's a letter from some parasitologists addressing DDT in malarial control and Rachel Carson's influence, although not specifically the point I was talking about in the last paragraph.

[Cumberdale]

Originally Posted by gotpasswords

I'd go back to 1935 or so and prevent the passage of the Public Utility Holding Act of 1935, which forced the divestiture of streetcar lines and shoehorned neatly into General Motors' desires to rip up streetcar lines and replace them with people driving their own cars.

GM was also a pioneer of the then-new concept of city planning. Not surprisingly, they did all they could to convince everyone that streetcars and trains were bad, but buses and cars (both conveniently available from GM) were good.

We (and the planet) woud be a lot better off if we had more inter-urban mass transit and fewer cars.

I would add- prevent the redesign of cities and towns to accomodate the car as the ONLY means of transportation. Essentially, I'd introduce the New Urbanist strategy and let cars become an exception rather than the rule.

[don't mind me]

Originally Posted by Cumberdale

I would add- prevent the redesign of cities and towns to accomodate the car as the ONLY means of transportation. Essentially, I'd introduce the New Urbanist strategy and let cars become an exception rather than the rule.

Let's take a three-pronged approach: I'll go back to the 1950s and channel all the money and manpower sunk into the Interstate Highway system into passenger rail.

[Ruby]

I would...

...alter the importance in the early days of product development to reduce packaging waste.

...along the same lines, educate (not fear-mongering) people early about the reality of a disposable society.

...focus on high speed passenger rail systems like those found in Asia

...focused on alternative energy resources

[Sage Rat]

It would be a bit of a gamble, but I suspect that the thing which most changed the world (for the better) was the proliferation of paper. If you could go back to the first civilizations and teach them all how to make paper, the advancement of societies and technology would be--literally--millenia beyond what it is now.

A brief history

[elelle]

If it's a swoop down type of thing: would have given Native American communities immunity to European diseases. This would have been an immense change in the world as we know it.

[Quartz]

I'd go back to Augustan Rome and explain the Scientific Principle and the decimal system. That way we get the Industrial Revolution out of the way and we'd now either be living in much better place or a blasted wasteland.

[Lumpy]

Here's some I've posted in previous threads:

• Go back in time about two million years and transplant colonies of early hominids to the Americas, southern Asia, and Australia. This would accomplish two things: the fauna of the areas would then have time to adapt to (initially) inefficient hominid hunters like African fauna did, so the human-driven extinctions either wouldn't happen or be not as bad. And secondly, it would give genus Homo the chance to remain diversified, and we would have been less apt to think of Sapiens as a unique divine creation (and less apt to denigrate sub-populations of Sapiens).
• Give the Romans living at the colder northern frontiers of their empire the inventions that later made northern Europe economically prosperous: the horse collar and the horseshoe, the moldboard plow, knitting wool, the horizontal loom and the spinning wheel, and the chimney and mantle fireplace. Civilization, and even better a thriving tax base, help prevent the collapse.
• Keep pushing Norse settlement of the New World until a viable colony gets established. The native Americans get a chance to acclimate to European diseases, and borrow European technology (ironworking, cattle, horses, etc.) before the invention of firearms gave Europeans the means to overwhelm the natives. The Aztecs would NOT crumble like powder because a weak superstitious emperor thought the whites were gods. For that matter, if the Aztecs gained cattle and hogs from Norse traders, they might not have had the ritualistic cannibal/sacrifice culture they developed. When Europeans finally did develop true ocean-going ships and guns, the native Americans might have resisted at least as well as the rest of the third world.
• At the dawn of WW1, show the surgeon generals of both sides that a compound first synthesized in the late 19th century, DDT, could kill body lice. If nothing else, the vast number of disease related deaths from that conflict would be reduced.