One of the main impetuses, that I hear about in books, podcasts and videos is, “We might be alone in the universe and if so, we have a duty to protect life”, or something there abouts.
As Gray asks in the SETI thread:
I think part of the bias for saving life is it just seems like we should. But any future people haven’t come into being and once all the people alive today are dead, we can’t remember or morn for the end of life in the universe.
We try, with thought experiments, to figure out how to get around losing our precious spark. How? Populate the universe of course! It’s easy, haven’t you seen Star Trek? But it’s not of course. A far easier, and smarter, plan is to not fuck this planet (and life) up. Ultimately, any and all life has an expiration date, anyway, if the Heat Death theory of the universe is to be believed so ultimately what’s the point? We have another 5 billion years here (yes I know, meteors, solar flares, Yellowstone volcanoes, etc. But any of those things should be easy to stop as opposed to sending a generation ship to Proxima Centauri b.).
I realize I’m kind of fighting my own hypothetical here but it seems so hand-wavy to say ‘on generation ships we will have to regulate the population by regulating births’. So why not just do that on Earth? Because people. Why fly to Proxima Centauri b to terraform it, when Mars is right next door? Because even with Earth as a supply base, it’s too damn hard. If we can terraform Mars (or Proxima Centauri b) why not just fix the climate change issues here?
The answer: people. The same basic people we propose sending out.
If we have the ability to have…
We should have the ability to save this planet. Not, Sam Stone, that I don’t think that’s a fantastic idea. It is! I’m just spit-balling here.
[quietly steps off soap box]