Stephen Hawking has issued another dire warning stating that world population will outpace resources within 100 years and apocalyptic trends are highly probable.
It isn’t the first time he has issued such catastrophic warnings. But his solution of moon settlement seems rather odd, to say the least. First the moon has no usable resources. Second the moon is highly fragile and upsetting its balance could actually ‘cause’ the earth to enter a cataclysmic stage. And third, how many people could it support? The answer is none. Fleeing earth that has resources to settle on the moon that has NO resources seems rather ill-advised.
The other alternative being juggled by NASA and the science community is to colonize Mars. This too seems rather inane given that all scientific data theorize that while Mars ‘may have’ had water resources at one time, due to it’s death, those resources can not be harvested. So again, why would we leave an abundant planet for a death planet?
One of the greatest fears is earth’s population explosion. Over the last couple hundred years, Europe’s population has declined, the US has risen minimally, even Africa’s population growth rate is a graphic low. The abundance comes from one source – China. For thousands of years China’s population remained stagnant. Then in 1750 it took a sharp tick upward and by 2017 had risen from 140 million to 1.5 billion, representing 20% of the entire world population.
India’s population is a close second with 1.3 billion, and Africa clambering behind at 1.186 billion. As a region, Asia accounts for 60% of the world population.
Why is this important? Because altering demographics in Europe and North America are going to have little to no effect on the overall crisis of the earth having too many people to sustain.
China’s one child policy was introduced in 1979 when the population was 977.8 million. So despite a one child policy, China’s total population grew 54% matching the total growth rate of India! Not exactly a success story. During the same period the US growth was 43%. While China and India can’t boast immigration as a factor in their growth, Europe and the US can, so their rates are a bit skewed and most likely quite lower in actuality.
There are only two means of reducing growth – via birth or via death…
And there is only one way to mitigate lacking resources – attach someone elses.
The most important resource is water.
And while scientists are trying to determine how they can harvest water on the moon, earthlings continue to fail to capture the water already generated here! Wouldn’t it make more sense to preserve? California is the most mundane example of a state whose usage of water is massive, and yet every seven years whines about drought conditions when they haven’t built a reservoir to capture the rainfall when it is abundant! Instead it is left to drain into the ocean, unused, wasted. These same Californians would have us spend trillions $$$$ to extract a couple gallons from the Moon…
Just to prove it exists.
Half of California’s water resources go to watering grass, 14% is lost due to leaky pipes, and 27% is used for toilets… The average water use per family in the US is roughly 552 gallons per day. However, the largest user of our water resources is through thermoelectric power which consumes roughly 41.5% of all usage.
In other words, all those conservation electric power plants consume 41.5% of our water resources. The states with the largest water draws for thermoelectric power include California, Texas, New York and Michigan. Once again, the circle takes us back to California where consumption of our most valuable resource is the highest, and preservation is the lowest.
Preservation and solutions seem a better way to resolve our earthly problems rather than leaving a dead planet in order to colonize another dead planet… Of course, transporting 7 billion people to the moon isn’t exactly feasible either. It took thirty years to build the Space Shuttle and it can hold 7 people.
PLAN B!
Hawking? Anyone? Anyone?