Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to How would one prioritize threats to Mother Nature?

One possible selling point...

Most of your list consists of threats to humanity, with a worst-case result similar to that TV special showing what happens if all the people disappear. Even climate change is a hazard mostly in terms of how humans are affected. During warm spells, or even ice ages, nature just moves things around a bit and waits for the next change to do it again.

An asteroid threatens the entire ecosystem much more severely, and while it would take a small moon hitting the Earth to render it lifeless, past collisions have probably created more extensive extinctions than any climate change ever did.

Not that I usually think this way, but from "Gaia's" point of view, the prime function of technological intelligence might be a way for an ecosystem to stop asteroid collisions. If humanity one day stops a major asteroid from hitting the planet, I think we'll have pretty much paid our rent here, even considering whatever ecological damage we may have done in the past.

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