The Earth will Expire, will we expire with it? an editorial by Jeremy

 The Earth will Expire, will we expire with it?

Jeremy Regier.  Posted: October 30^th, 2017 1:00 PM CST

The Earth is a delicate resource and we only got one, so making progress and increasing production is not worth the collateral for the only home we have.

Eventually, the earth is going to be unlivable. It is expected that by 2050 the earth will have around 10.5 billion people, right now there is around 7.5. These big numbers don’t seem like a lot, but what happens at 20, or 50 billion people? At some point, there will be too many people living on Earth, and all the crops and animals won’t be able to sustain the amount of people because there will be too many mouths to feed. So what will happen? We will have to find a more efficient way to produce food, lower birth rates, or we could just kill everyone, but food will still be scarce, and only the wealthy will be able to afford the necessity that we require to be alive, and even if the wealthy were to share their resources it still wouldn’t be enough for everyone. If the world stays overpopulated a lot of the world will go hungry.

The earth is surrounded by a blanket of air and other gases, called an Atmosphere. The Atmosphere protects the earth and us with it. Without the atmosphere we would either be burned by the intense heat from the sun in the day, or freeze during the night. Still pollution is constantly pumped into the air, and is slowly distorting the atmosphere. Some of the effects of Pollution are smog, algae build up, even Acid Rain, or quite resent like global warming. World Wide pollution is not easy something you can stop. We would have to stop the multitude of companies that pollute the earth by burning fossil fuels.

What happens when the earth is so polluted and overpopulated? If we as Human Beings don’t have any solutions then we are going to die along with this planet. We are very restricted when it comes to solutions, because there isn’t an easy fix. Overpopulation is a hard fix, we would have to produce food at a more efficient way than ever before. With all the children being born at the extensive speed, we would have to lower the birth rates of the countries with high birth rates. Just getting rid of people by having a mass genocide isn’t something you can do morally.

Pollution is heavily related to production, whether that is a water bottle company that produces thousands of bottles a day, a company that uses fossil fuel for power, or the everyday person driving in their car. One of the best solutions would be finding resource that we can use as fuel, which does not kill the earth when it is used. Such as finding more efficient ways of using solar, wind, and water energy, or finding a whole different way all together.

So, what do we do? There are some farfetched solutions that could work like creating a Biodome. Similar to, if you remember the Simpsons episode or the TV show “Under the Dome” where their whole city is trapped under a giant dome. A Bio Dome would be basically the same thing; there would be a small civilization living inside a safe dome with everything they need to survive; meanwhile, the whole world rots around them.

There is a harder solution, packing up and moving planets. The easiest and closest planet to terraform would be Mars, but it wouldn’t be a walk in the park. Mars is a difficult planet: it lacks sufficient air pressure, has way too much carbon monoxide, and it lacks an Electromagnetic field, and it has a very thin sheet for an atmosphere. Mars is a big task. We would need to create an artificial moon to get a proper Electromagnetic Field and create and try to maintain a proper atmosphere. We are not prepared for when the Earth is no longer livable. Eventually the earth will be unlivable, I think people need to wrap their minds around a solution, moving to Mars is a big task. NASA is pioneering the next steps in Space Exploration and they are working on traveling to mars and sending humans to mars. NASA Headquarters released a PDF file about their goals to travel to mars, “As pioneers, we seek to blaze the trail for others, establishing a presence that leads to economic progress and broad societal benefit. We pioneer space to discover life, identify resources, foster economic growth, inspire and educate, protect ourselves from space-based threats, and leave a better future for the next generation. This goal is embodied in the idea of a human and robotic journey to Mars.” Humans are very resilient to the idea of not burning fossil fuels, either we need to move on to a less destructive fuel source, or we need to get ready to pack up and move to mars, once Earth becomes no longer viable.

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