Many have speculated whether we are alone in the universe. Its vastness makes good odds we are not alone. Some science fiction stories describe a universe filled with life, commerce, and politics different only from Earth’s in its scale. These stories often go further to describe a bustling universe that is aware of Earth but wary of engaging it until it proves itself to be survivable from nuclear destruction and sustainability. The argument is that most worlds don’t so why bother until the issue is settled.
Earth, as with any intelligent life-filled world, evolved first through sparse clans of hunter-gatherers, to settlements with agriculture, to organized countries with urban density, to probing its solar system. Along the way, it picked up fire, then organized and exploited energy, and finally discovered atomic energy. It discovered the wheel and learned how to fly. It became scientific, meaning that it learned laws of physics, chemistry, and biology while elaborating theories about them and elucidating their mechanisms. It developed engineering, meaning that it put that science to work in ways ranging from the constructed world to efficient agriculture to massive communication. It hit a sweet spot in its twentieth century of keeping track.
Even with its sweet spot, however, there were bumps in the road getting there, being there, and getting past there. From the first day one clan mistrusted another and wanted its food, there have been wars. After Hitler and with a growing global economy, we thought we had finally learned that not only is war evil it is futile. But then despots like Putin and Kim remind us that nuclear war is still possible. Is it only a matter of time?
If war doesn’t destroy the earth, our penultimate exploitation of it may. Ecologists have a concept called “carrying capacity” – the population limit for sustainability. We have some margin left for feeding ourselves but we’re out of rope for energy. The irony is that it is not energy supply, as we feared in the 1970s; it is the impact of fossil energy causing the earth’s climate to change. Every planet with advancing civilization must face this issue, eventually. Those that survive it learn to energize with alternatives to sources that affect climate.
So today we face our two most existential issues – nuclear war and climate change. Half of the world’s fingers on the nuclear button belong to people who respect its potential for devastation while the other half are either maniacs or devious. Putin’s war should make us realize that it really could happen – total devastation or, at best, a ticket back to the stone age. Currently, the way we are dealing with climate change leaves little hope for a real solution. The best we may be able to do is Adaptation. This won’t be good enough, however, and the earth will be left with a future of just scraping by. Not of much interest to the rest of the universe. Door One opens a beginning to the universe; Door Two ends back in the stone age. It could go either way.