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The industrial space age
October 05, 2007Could the exploitation of space solve the earth's environmental crises?
The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I fifty years ago on October 4th, marking the beginning of our use of space for political, military, technological, and scientific ends. Since then we have launched hundreds of satellites, space probes, telescopes, moon missions, and planetary landers. Now, political scientist Rasmus Karlsson suggests that space could provide us with a sustainable future not possible from an earthbound only perspective.
Writing in the October issue of Inderscience publication, International Journal of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Karlsson, a researcher at the University of Lund, Sweden, explains that over the years, two strands of thought on sustainable development have emerged. They are ecologism and environmentalism. Ecologism offers a solution by emphasizing the need for major socioeconomic reform aimed at a post-industrial era. Environmentalism, in contrast, focuses on the preservation, restoration, and improvement of the natural environment within the present framework.
However, Karlsson, suggests that there is a third approach to sustainable development that has until now been excluded from the agenda - namely a large-scale industrial expansion into space.
He suggests that access to the raw materials found on the Moon as well as unfiltered solar energy could be used to increase dramatically our stock of resources and energy while providing unlimited sinks for pollutants. Such an approach would satisfy two of the most demanding issues regarding sustainability, finding renewable energy sources and the disposal of pollutants.
Resource scarcity, pollution, and dwindling fossil fuels, have become of serious environmental concern in the last few decades. As such, environmentalists have called for massive reductions in energy and material consumption. Seemingly unrelated but running in parallel is that the promise of space exploration has been limited to technological optimists whose economic framework rarely acknowledges any such scarcity. Karlsson suggests that it is time to reconcile the politics of scarcity with this technological optimism and to devise a unified political vision for the 21st century that will allow lead to a truly sustainable planet by extending our reach into space.
Inderscience Publishers
However, Karlsson, suggests that there is a third approach to sustainable development that has until now been excluded from the agenda - namely a large-scale industrial expansion into space.
He suggests that access to the raw materials found on the Moon as well as unfiltered solar energy could be used to increase dramatically our stock of resources and energy while providing unlimited sinks for pollutants. Such an approach would satisfy two of the most demanding issues regarding sustainability, finding renewable energy sources and the disposal of pollutants.
Resource scarcity, pollution, and dwindling fossil fuels, have become of serious environmental concern in the last few decades. As such, environmentalists have called for massive reductions in energy and material consumption. Seemingly unrelated but running in parallel is that the promise of space exploration has been limited to technological optimists whose economic framework rarely acknowledges any such scarcity. Karlsson suggests that it is time to reconcile the politics of scarcity with this technological optimism and to devise a unified political vision for the 21st century that will allow lead to a truly sustainable planet by extending our reach into space.
Inderscience Publishers
Sustainable Development Current Events and Sustainable Development News RSSEcological restoration as a tool for reversing ecosystem fragmentation
Ecosystem fragmentation, along with many other global trends, is causing the natural world to undergo profound changes at all spatial scales from the micro-habitat to the continental.
Rising energy, food prices major threats to wetlands as farmers eye new areas for crops
Critical food shortages and growing demand for bio-fuels and hydro-electricity due to high fossil fuel prices rank among the greatest threats today to the preservation of precious wetlands worldwide as farmers and developers look for new areas for agriculture, energy crop plantations and hydro dams.
Special topics in environmental mechanics
With rapid development of economics since the 1980s, people have been increasingly realized that the environment plays an important role in the sustainable development of society and economy.
Can feces save the species?
It's a tough job, but somebody, or at least some dogs, have to do it. In the Cerrado region of Brazil, four dogs trained to detect animal feces by scent are helping researchers monitor rare and threatened wildlife such as jaguar, tapir, giant anteater and maned wolf in and around Emas National Park, a protected area with the largest concentration of threatened species in Brazil.
Reducing carbon emissions could help -- not harm -- US economy
A national policy to cut carbon emissions by as much as 40 percent over the next 20 years could still result in increased economic growth, according to an interactive website that reviews 25 of the leading economic models used to predict the economic impacts of reducing emissions.
Workshop assesses interactions between climate, forests and land use in the Amazon Basin
On February 25 and 26, over 50 scientists gathered for a two-day workshop in Manaus, Brazil, to discuss the current state of knowledge on the feedbacks between deforestation and climate in the Amazon and what research is required to avoid catastrophic change.
Global trade in tiger shrimp threatens environment
The cultivation of shrimp and fish in tropical coastal areas is often described as an environmentally friendly way to alleviate poverty, but in fact this cultivation has negative consequences for both the local population and the environment. Daniel A. Bergquist of Uppsala University, Sweden, has studied how policies for sustainable development can go so wrong.
Data on Life Expectancy Show Many Countries Clustered in High Mortality Traps
Growing recognition of the importance of health as a contributing factor to economic development and societal change has prompted the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to add a new subsection in Sustainable Health to its existing section on Sustainable Development.
New animal and plant species found in Vietnam
World Wildlife Fund scientists said today that the discovery of 11 new animal and plant species in a remote area in central Vietnam underscores the importance of conservation efforts in the ancient tropical forests of the region.
Smithsonian Fragmentation Project threatened by Amazon Colonization Plan
The Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, one of the most important long-term research efforts in the Amazon, is imperiled by new colonization proposed by the Brazilian federal agency SUFRAMA.
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