Life Beyond Earth

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Read about CALENDAR REFORM, Life, and public service articles here.
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Life Beyond Earth

There are over 7 billion people living on Earth today. In addition to that more people are born
than those who die daily. Because of these facts some very difficult times lie ahead for the human
race as well as for all other life forms on this planet. The rest of this article presents my point of
view about why we soon need to start to plan for some kind of real life beyond Earth.

As the population of Earth continues to grow, it will start to consume a lot more resources than the
planet can produce. Many species will become extinct as man is forced to consume them to
subsist. Imagine the case where well have a dog in the house not as a pet but to serve as a meal
when there is nothing else left to eat. But the time will come when there are no more live plants
or creatures left for man to consume. So, life beyond Earth is an issue that we must begin to
address right away. This way we can predict what will ensue to those who are still alive when
these events occur. And if we can predict those events we can also plan to reduce their ill effects
on man and the planet.

I began writing this article about life beyond Earth a few weeks ago and had set it aside to
complete other more pressing tasks first. However, as I slept a few nights ago I woke up in the
middle of a bad dream that caused me to get up at about 4 AM to take down notes about the
dream so I would not forget the details. I realize that the reason for the dream is that my
subconscious mind was seeking for answers to my questions about life beyond Earth, but the
points in the dream are very plausible. The main points from my dream appear in next six
paragraphs:

I was in a future Earth where there were an incredible 41 billion humans alive.

Note: That is about 6 times the number of people that live on our planet today. With that many
people the world faced problems that not many of us think about on a day to day basis. Some of
the problems that I observed during my dream and that are valid for my life beyond Earth subject
are:

Plant and Animal Extinctions

Extinction of almost all species of plant and animal life as humans used them for food. The planet
could not produce enough resources to feed such a large amount of living organisms. Natural
deaths were too few when paired to the number of babies born each day.

Anger Toward Science and Medicine

The entire human race was enraged at the doctors and scientists who in the past were thought of
as heroes for finding ways to extend human life and help us to live happier, healthier, and longer
lives. However, after reaching these frightful results caused by over-population now people were
mad at the sciences and the medical field which had failed to predict the awful results the world
faced now. Under these conditions doctors, scientists, and teachers were being put to death by
out of control crowds. This forced doctors, teachers, scientists, and any person with any kind of
knowledge to conceal their skills. They did not practice their line of work for fear of being the
object of a lynching.

Hunger and Famine

Under these settings life on Earth was an extreme daily struggle. Hunger, famine, and disease
spread like wildfire and came to be real hard to control.

Wars and Cannibalism

Many nations warred against each other just to get control of the number of people alive, but not
enough were being killed to keep pace with the number of births per day. In remote places of
certain countries there were some groups hunting other groups and using the dead bodies of their
foes for food. Other countries pretended not to notice and quietly allowed this cannibal acts to
take place.

Lucky for me I woke as it was a very disturbing place to live in as I did not know when someone
was going to hit me on the back of the head in order to serve my flesh for supper. Now I can also
write the final pieces of this life beyond Earth paper.

Under extreme population densities the first thing that will likely happen is that nations will stop
sharing or selling their resources so they can conserve them for their own people. Thus, countries
which are rich in natural resources may last a little longer than those which have less. At this level
basic survival instincts kick in and people will take care of their own basic needs and ignore the
needs of all others. I would hate to think what kind of things those who find themselves at the
brink of extinction would be willing to do to try to insure the survival of their families. And at the
same time what would the ones who still have some food left do to protect their last few goods
from the others. Can you imagine such a scene?

What Can We Do to Ensure Life Beyond Earth Is Possible?

The first thing we need to do is stop the population growth and if possible cause it to drop back or
to at least stay where it is now! How are we going to stop people from making more babies? This
question could be better answered by science and medicine but since they have failed till now I
will suggest a few answers of my own here:

1.Life beyond Earth may be quite possible but until we can make it happen we must educate
school aged kids now to plan for later so that an over-population scenario will never come to pass.
Children are not as dumb as some of us might think and at least some of them will heed and learn
what we teach them. We may have to dispense with some of our religious views to set the proper
stage for teaching kids that life itself has more value than religion. They need to learn to slow
down the spread of life to protect life itself as we know it. I realize some of this has been taught to
school children over the last four or five decades. However, the results show that they didnt
accept what we taught them as truth. We must find new ways to teach the subject and make it
credible. At the current growth rates we may not be able to go through another four or five more
decades without seeing any results. Only if we can succeed in these tasks will we be able to stop
worrying about life beyond Earth.

2.Make birth control methods freely available to all. The cost will be negligible compared to the
scenario seen in the bad dream above. If we educate kids from real early on they will learn the
reason why birth control is a must if we want to preserve or world. And if we remove the expense
involved in the prevention methods we will get more of the poor and the less educated to join the
cause. There is a lot more to gain than what our future citizens stand to lose. Also, science will
have a few more years to figure out how to support life beyond Earth.

3.If we cant stop people from throwing more and more babies into the world we will have to figure
out how to ethically solve the problem after the fact. It is the duty of those who have the power to
act, to act and do what is necessary to protect the world. Leaders must do what is necessary to
ensure the survival of the many even if some have to sacrifice to ensure that survival. The only
way this can be done if people refuse to control their birth to death ratios is to make more non-
nuclear wars. Nuclear wars cannot be used as they will not only damage humans but also the
Earth, making it unable to support life and speeding up the need to find an answer for the life
beyond Earth issue. These ideas may sound appalling to some, but the cost of inaction could be
the death of mankind.

4.Find other places around the universe where we can expand the human race to and thus
alleviate the burden we place on our Earth. We need to increase our efforts in the fields of
science and technology like never before. We need to place priority in figuring out how to convert
celestial objects that cannot support life into worlds that CAN support life. We need to think along
the lines of what kind of elements we must add into a lifeless atmosphere to make life beyond
Earth possible. If we figure out how to convert one lifeless planet into a planet that can support
life, we will be able to spread around the universe and relief Earth from its current woes. In order
for a planet to be truly livable we need to find out how to make it support life without machines,
masks, or special suits. If we were able to figure out how to make a nuclear weapon in the past
we should be able to put that kind of minds to the work of finding out how to make any atmosphere
able to support life naturally. I am confident our scientists will find the answer. I just hope they
can find ways to support life beyond Earth before it is too late and man ceases to exist.

The scenarios I have painted in this article may seem like trivial to readers today as life beyond
Earth has not yet become an essential issue. But consider the fact that the population of the
world as you read this page is about 7,057,658,000 and yes, it took a few decades to break into
the 7 billion mark but it is growing faster now than at any other time in the past. When I began my
research for this article, about four weeks ago, world population was at about 7.054 billion but in
this four short weeks it went up to about 7.058 billion. That is a growth of 4 million people in a little
less than one month. And according to my research the world right now is growing at a rate of
over 212,000 people per day or about 77 million per year. If you do the math you will see that if
we continue to grow at this rate we will reach 8 billion people in about 12 to 15 years. Because of
the way population grows it may only take 7 to 10 years after that to reach 9 billion and we will
start to run out of time to find answers to our life beyond Earth needs.

The number of years to reach each subsequent billion will continue to be less and less until the
world population will start to double every few years. By that time we will have no choice but to
consider life beyond Earth an absolute priority. Thus, plans for life beyond Earth need to start
soon.

We can spend billions of dollars to study asteroids and other celestial bodies that wont help us any
in the long run, or we can use those funds to figure out how to make a planet such as Mars able to
support life.

Summary

We humans have utterly failed to control our natural instincts and desires and have continued to
make baby after baby for years until we are reaching the point where Earth will not be able to
support us for long.

Is this what we want history to record about us for posterity? Do we want to be remembered as
too dumb to figure out the answers that insure our survival?

We need to plan for life beyond Earth from right now so that the bleak futures I spoke of in this
article never come to pass. If we succeed in our quest we will be able to proudly show future
generations that we were able to save Earth instead of destroying it.

If we continue to fail we will have no choice but to consider life beyond Earth an absolute
necessity. Therefore, plans for such a requirement need to start as soon as possible.

About the author: Carmelo Echevarria is a retired military currently dedicated to blogging on
several online sites. You can visit his primary site at http://www.ces1a.com



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Read about CALENDAR REFORM, Life, and public service articles here.
http://calendar-reform.ces1a.com

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