Humans belong to one of the most, if not THE most, destructive species on Earth. We exploit all resources we can lay our hands on and destroy plants and animals in the wake of our immense and selfish greed. We would serve the Universe best if we stayed here on Earth, and possibly even obliterated ourselves.
Every species on Earth exploits all resources it can lay its "hands" on and destroy plants and animals in the wake of its immense and selfish greed. We are just better at it.
I'm on the other side of this one, while I think it's stupid to wreck the Earth because we need it I don't see why we shouldn't expand out and use the resources, they are just rocks waiting for us to do something with them.
All the Whos in Whoville would beg to differ about them being "rocks waiting for us to do something with them".
Flippancy aside, just assuming there is no consequential life on any of those rocks just waiting for use to exploit is quite arrogant of us. I'm fully behind humans being multi-planetary to increase our bus factor and because it's just plain awesome. I also think some caution is needed to prevent us destroying signs of other life before we even know what we've done. But this is not some revelation, smarter people that me have already thought this stuff through. We just have to follow through on the protocols.
For the most activities we embark on, none of us is ready for. We just jump in and learn on the fly, the journey itself transforms and adapts us. So, maybe we haven't learned enough about taking care of a planet, but that's not a reason to hold ourselves back ...isn't it?
Think about 50 years from now, when we are expected to have a few more billion people living here on Earth. If you think things are stretched to their limit now, just wait.
It may be that the only way to save Earth is to give some of the 10+ billion another place to go.
There is an irony here in that we are the only beings we (yet) know of that in any way appreciate the universe on an aethestic level, on subjective criteria we have determined ourselves. So we would be obliterating ourselves to save the universe for... ?
But again, it is only us humans that value diversity. You would be obliterating the only species that would appreciate the thing you are obliterating them to preserve.
