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We are doomed to spend the remainder of our existence as a species on our current, rather damaged, planet. We live on the only planet in our solar system capable of supporting human life on a meaningful scale.
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We are doomed to spend the remainder of our existence as a species on our planet... That is, until the planet turns against us and once again return back to an environment unsuitable for human.
For most of the time since life started on earth, it didn't have an environment suitable for human life. You may call it damaged planet, but the planet itself is healthy. It has been much warmer yet blooming with life, it has been much colder yet blooming with life, it has had 2x the oxygen yet blooming with life, and it has had 2x the CO2 yet blooming with life. It is healthy - just not suitable for us humans.
Like other life forms on earth, there was a time when those life forms were perfectly suited to live in the environment at that time. They evolved to be seemingly perfect for the environment, almost like how well the earth and the sun seem perfect for us. But with or without them or us, the environment will change by itself. Some how, The Big Die Off occurs. We all know about the Dinosaurs, but that was nothing. There was the
Ordovician–Silurian Extinction (86% of all species gone ~440 MillionYearsAgo), or the
Late Devonian Extinction (75%, 364MYA), and of course the REAL big one,
Permian–Triassic extinction (96%, 250MYA). Some how, what was perfect environment just changed...
We are the first species to be capable of developing technologies to help us survive in unsuitable environment. We damn well better start learning how to do exactly that instead of relying on keeping the status quo. Temperature will change whether we are here or not - be it by solar cycle, asteroid strike, or by the movement of our continental shelves (volcano on the ring of fire), so on, so on, so on. Atmosphere will change whether we are here or not. Then there are disasters that creates quick changes: Statistically, we are overdue for Yellow Stone Super Volcano (statistically every 600K years, last happened 640KYA). Statistically, we are overdue for magnetic pole inversion (183 times in 83M years = 450K years, last happened 780KYA)...
Oh, another good news: Don't forget, we developed during and are living in the
Holocene "inter-glacial period". Here on this forum, every one knows what "inter-" means. So even if all the random stuff like asteroid strike stayed away, more than likely
this inter-glacial period will end returning us back to yet another round of an ice age. Ice sheet will go as far south as New York covering New York by perhaps ice as thick as 2 miles. That means most of current northern Europe, Russia, China, Argentina, Australia... will be under ice as well. You are talking time scale of mere 10s of thousands years, not millions of years.
So, we are very lucky to have evolved and developed. Things around us changes all the time that can send us back to non-existence. We are here hoping to keep the status quo, same as the dinosaurs did except they were probably not smart enough to hope. We are smart enough to hope. We better also know that status quo is not the nature of our earth, nor is status quo being the nature of the universe. Change could happen in the blink of an eye (geologically speaking) and without prior warning.
We need to learn to live in environment that is not friendly to us, or we go the way of the Trilobites.