Two alternate metaphors for the planet. I disagree with Lovelock that there are too many people, or that there is some magical “right” number of them. It’s all a function of technology level. And I disagree with Ward, too:
In his view, the costs and distances involved in moving outward from the solar system – or even terraforming the moon or Mars – just don’t seem worth the effort.
Obviously they don’t now. Technology advances will change that.
Rand
It is so funny to me that so many people who have absolutely no training, experience, or understanding of what it does actually take, and what the rewards actually are for space industrialization can make such definitive and dismissive statements about it.
Metaphorical explanations of a supposed homeostatic quality of this planet don’t mean much in a Solar System that’s a shooting gallery.
And the discussion thread quickly degenerates into the usual human and technology bashing. Some day some clowns will take this beyond the “humans are bad” stage and well into the “kill everyone I don’t like” stage.
I think it’s fair to say that several clowns already have: Stalin, Hitler, Bin Laden, etc.
I think we should feel lucky that Bin Ladin was using 767’s and not 100,000 tonne ore barges.
I take it that they are implying that humanity just isn’t worth all the trouble and money. These are probably the same touchy feely types that proclaim such nuggets of wisdom like, “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”; except when its too much effort.
I have only a passing familiarity with the Gaia hypothesis, but I was under the impression that it was quite contrary to greenie dogma– namely that the hypothesis boiled down to: “bitch slap Mother Earth all you like, life (in some form) will come back”.