As a creature capable of empathy, I am quite upset at the thought of incalculable suffering we are condemning future generations to just because we can't be bothered not to.
I don't believe there is: in that regard, humanity is as much in control of its own destiny as a mold colony growing on a slice of bread under a glass dome.
To wit: we have been incapable of solving basic problems like ending hunger or war for our entire history. There is zero reason to believe we can actually do anything about something much harder like global warming.
What will happen is what seem to happen to all form of life on planet Earth throughout history (e.g all life before stromatolites started pumping highly poisonous oxygen into the biosphere, or dinosaurs and whatever put them down, etc...): we will go through a cataclysmic, extinction-level event.
What will come out the other side will likely still be life, but unlikely be human, or if it is, vastly changed.
And you can pump out as much empathy as you'd like. As has been repeated ad nauseam, the physical world doesn't give two hoots.
If a solution exists to global warming, it's expansion, nothing else. Musk is correct in that regard.
> If a solution exists to global warming, it's expansion, nothing else. Musk is correct in that regard.
And then I was like: yeah, this is exactly why we should not expand; we don't deserve it.
But I'm an optimist. The universe is a whole hell of a lot smarter than we are, and it will properly contain and eliminate us.
The universe doesn't care about your concept of 'deserving'. By the universe's definition, anything we can achieve is 'deserved'.
The idea that the coming generations are more important than the current is frankly the most unemphatic thing I have heard in a long time.
You're right. We should definitely continue with the status quo of stuffing our fat faces with slop and burning oil like there's no tomorrow, literally.
I never said we shouldn't do anything. What I said is that the idea of simply using the well being of the future generations as an argument for how the current generations should behave isn't empathic.
We should do a lot of course among others keep developing new technologies to solve some of the problems that humans create while still allowing the many millions who are poor improve their lives too.
That is the paradoxical discussion here and it's frankly way more important than some strawman about not doing anything here.
Last time I looked most people weren’t idling their time away in a stress free paradise.