Earth vs Jeff’s Trillion

When the population of animals or insects in a region grows substantially and causes damage, we call it an infestation.

Yet we humans have never looked at it the same way when it comes to ourselves, on how we grow and expand to displace and occupy forests, oceans, plant and animal territory.

And that concern is worsened multi-fold when public figures like Jeff Bezos say things like he did around 2018, that someday ‘a trillion people will live in space, there will be “a thousand Einsteins and a thousand Mozarts” and we’ll develop other planets, leaving Earth a beautiful place to be’, that isn’t coming from a place of need-based expansion, but rather a fascinating-sounding image to sell tickets on his spaceship.

Because then us common mortals start seeing the planet like we do an existing, well-functioning phone, when someone we admire gives us a preview of a fancy, upcoming phone. Our reaction is often reflected in what I call a ‘rolled model’ (as opposed to a role model).

We are suddenly even less careful with our phone. We don’t mind if it falls a few times, or if something we placed on it risks scratching the screen or leaking onto it.

Because someone we admire gave us a preview of what our world and life would be, with that upcoming new phone.

So what if that person we admire actually sells phones. So what if we are suddenly alright with our current phone getting damaged.

We are simply fixated on the possibilities of the new.

Only, in the case of the planet, the intention of the likes of Musk and Bezos is simply to sell tickets to space. But the effect of such previews don’t just influence our actions to affect our phone, but influence and magnify the damage we cause to the blue dot that’s home to a lot more than just us.

Here’s a very interesting article: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220905-is-the-world-overpopulated

#earth #population #ecologicalbreakdown #space #balance