I have never been keen on the idea of pouring massive amounts of money into space travel - not because I am un-curious about what's out there, but because I am suspicious that much of the motivation is based on a need to find another inhabitable planet. I think we have, or had, a perfectly good one already and should put our efforts into looking after it instead. My judgement seems more justified after hearing a lecture by David Suzuki at the latest PIAF in which he presented an extraordinary analogy. Images are powerful and this one created a really graphic vision of the plight of humanity.
It's a numbers game. He said that if you imagined an hour long timeline for the history of humanity in the form of bacteria in a test tube, this is how it would look. Population increases exponentially, that is, it doubles geometrically - from 1 to 2, from 2 to 4 and so on. We started out as one cell and it took us thousands of years to get to this point, even at the 58th minute we had a lot less people. But because of the exponential rate of increase we are now at the 59th minute - which means that at the next increase the test tube will be full. Now the problem with that, is that even if we do find another test tube, another liveable planet, at the next increase it will be immediately filled to the brim. So what is the point of looking for another planet? If we find one it will be the same as this one in less than a minute.
I am not a scientist or an economist but I have been banging on about the economics of greed for ever. So have a lot of my friends. So if unimportant people like us can see it, and great people like David Suzuki can see it - why do we still have an economy based solely on growth? As Suzuki says, why do we need all this stuff? Where IS everyone going in such a hurry? He also says (and I have been echoing in psycho-spiritual speak) no system can be based entirely on growth - it goes against the law of Nature, or the universe or whatever. This is a truth so simple it has obviously been missed.
I still maintain that Nature will bring us to our knees, but if economics has got us here, then it will now be the instrument of our disillusionment. The pack of cards is tumbling again, or as one economist put it, if one of a group of mountain climbers roped together falls, they all do. Economies belong to the world now - no country is immune.
I am predicting 2012 - not too original, but something is going to shift. I don't believe so many predictions can be wrong. Maybe it won't be the end of the world, but it may be the end as we know it.
