We should leave the planet…

-This is an article I was sending out in an effort to get syndicated-

After evaluating our position here on Earth, I feel humans as a species should leave the planet. I would consider it the smart and logical thing to do. To think that the sun is just a star that will eventually die and kill our solar system, is enough for me. Earth and all her inhabitants are inevitably doomed, if not even before the sun dies.

Let us also face another tough reality, we are on a planet with limited resources, which we are burning through at what many scientists and environmentalist would consider an alarming rate. How long before the world battles one another for what resources remain? We live in what arguably might be, the best time to be on Earth, or at least near it… the pleasure that many of us share masks a lot of harsh realities of the future.

I definitely don’t subscribe to some mass suicide or anything of that nature. I think if carefully orchestrated, humans could make a rather graceful exit from the planet. I like to picture a world that gradually brings down its population and people migrate over time from harsher environments to better ones. Then as time progresses, eventually you would try to get all humans left into a small area with an optimal environment. Finally, a final generation would come of age that would not birth any children into this world, and the human race would have officially left… Which as the plan progresses, we will be extending our resources much farther…

I personally think that is where a lot of research and development should be spent, preparing for a final generation, making life as comfortable for a small group of people that will not have younger generations to take care of them. I think we can learn a lot from our concepts of inhabiting and colonizing mars. They think they can make these self-sustaining pod communities that could sustain people for life there, would seem some appropriate technology for a community of older citizens with no one to take care of them… That they wouldn’t need to apply an exuberant amount of work to survive and be comfortable.

A big question would be, is the human race even capable of completing such a task? It seems to go against astronomical odds given our current situation and population. Also, the amount of differing personalities. Not to mention, anywhere along the plan, it just takes a few families running off that decide they want to repopulate the world to screw everything up… While, I am convinced it is the most logical thing for the human race to do, the probability of a plan like that succeeding does not seem likely.

It then begs another question… is the human race destined to meet dire ends? That our story ends very painfully, and with much human suffering. I hope not, and I think we need to be aware of our situation and try to avoid the future dilemmas. This world is such a hostile place, always worried about the next famine, disease epidemic, or an asteroid hitting us, to name a few. To leave makes sense for so many reasons, so much of human life here, is suffering to begin with.

It is something we should be thinking about while we still can, while we are at a height of technology, before our resources are gone… we should try to leave before it gets much harder to and in a graceful manner.