“If our long term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds” – Carl Sagan
It is inescapable as the laws of physics that humanity will one day confront some type of extinction-level event.
If we scan all life-forms that have ever existed on the Earth from microscopic bacteria to towering forests, lumbering dinosaurs to enterprising humans, we find that more than 99.9 % of them eventually became extinct. This means extinction is the norm. The Earth has already sustained 5 major extinction cycles, in which up to 90% of life forms vanished from earth.
But if there is one lesson we can learn from history, it is that humanity, when faced with life threatening crises, has risen to the challenge and reached for even higher goals.
Life is too precious to be placed on a single planet, to be at the mercy of these planetary threats. We should become a ‘two-planet species’.
This extract is from Michio Kaku’s book – The Future of Humanity – Terraforming Mars, Interstellar travel, Immortality and destiny beyond earth.
This longer term perspective highlights our ‘responsibility to deal more kindly with one another’ and more importantly, raise children who are comfortable in navigating a future very unlike our own.
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