38
No cities on the Moon: a billion tons of water is not enough for sustainability
(www.frontiersin.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2026
38 points (95.2% liked)
Science
22493 readers
87 users here now
Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
The whole reason humans spread all across the globe is due to our ability to shape our environment to our needs.
Currently we are destroying a formerly perfect environment.
That formerly perfect environment could not support the current human population. And I'm not saying we're doing a good job in terms of long term planning here. I'm merely pointing out that we have the ability to shape our environment, and that's what allowed for our civilization to exist in the first place.
Great at shaping our own environment for the immediate stuff like shelter, temperature, food, logistics. But the more foundational long-term stuff, like an atmosphere or a local ecology? We don't have a great track record.
To be fair, there was no evolutionary driver for that kind of large scale and long term planning. Humans evolved in an environment where it was important to prioritize immediate survival over long horizon goals. So, we're notoriously bad at making any sacrifices in the short term for the benefit of the long term. And on top of it all, capitalism makes the whole problem a whole lot worse by rewarding the most destructive and wasteful behaviors.
Here I go watching Wanderers again...
I love that short clip.
Do we shape our environment to our needs?
We very obviously do, most of the human population lives in cities and wouldn't make it through a single week in the wild.
I see, yes I see where you are coming from. On the other hand, I was thinking of climate change, plastic in the oceans, PFAS and so on. Human products that are damaging the ecosystem around us and that will mostly hit humanity in the back of its neck in the near future. So we DO shape our environment- but not to our ACTUAL needs.
That's just a contradiction of our current mode of production. The negative effect is sure there, but it's outweighed by the positive outcomes. This gigantic mechanized monolithic production system that turns the whole humanity into one big voracious machine is what eventually will allow us to fully decentralise the way we produce things while keeping the automation and thus avoid the destruction we've been causing for so long.
Think of this: you don't need packaging if you consume in the same place where you produce. You can also much more easily recycle used materials if you don't need them to travel for thousands miles and can instead use them right where you are. If you use local small and natural sources of energy instead of burning millions of tons of coal, you also don't pollute the enviranment as much. All of this will only be possible thanks to this destructive phase we're currently in. So ultimately we do cater our actual needs - somewhat contradictory at times, but still.
That’s a lot of wishful thinking to digest ;-). There’s zero evidence to support this vision , and human egoism (wars, revenue-focus, …) seem to be IMHO completely ignored. I witnessed these type of predictions in the 70s, 90s, 10s… they never materialized.
The ongoing automation is the evidence. The trend is to fully automate the whole production chain and that will lead to decentralisation, because centralisation only makes sense with human labour.
Human egoism isn't bad in itself. The problem is that it conflicts with altruism. That's where it gets destructive. But this can be solved. If everyone can automatically produce what they need themselves, there's no more competing for who's going to be the one providing and the one taking. The roles merge. Egoism and altruism become the same thing and neither stays destructive.
Sure, we create a lot of problems in our shaping of the environment, and we tend to prioritize short term needs over long term ones.