2050
STORAGE IS A PROBLEM for most city
dwellers and, despite our ascent into
high-rise spaces due to overcrowding
on the ground, Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos, arguably the world’s greatest
entrepreneur, wants to send space-
hogging stuff to, well, space. So is this
a matter of us shifting our junk to another
planet and carrying on with our unbridled
consumption? Soberingly, no. It is rooted
in a dire environmental crisis on Earth that
needs urgent solutions.
Though this may conjure up images of
film director Luc Besson-esque scenes, it
is the elements of travel and storage,
rather than a sci-fi “fifth element”, that
Bezos is cultivating. His comments atthe International Space Development
conference last year, backed by his
pledged annual investment of
approximately $1.4 billion of Amazon
stock into his space-exploration business,
Blue Origin, demonstrate that inhabiting
another planet is firmly in his sights. Other
pioneers in this field are Elon Musk’s
SpaceX and Richard Branson’s Galactic,
which both have intergalactic rockets in
development for space tourism. Given
that Musk claims his rockets will
be ferrying passengers to Mars by
2024, having a galactic wardrobe or
manufacturing hub may be a reality of
the near, rather than distant, future.
Our planet’s most polluting
substances — oil and gas — are depleting
fast. In addition, figures from the National
Centers for Environmental Information
and the International Energy Agency
show that CO2 emissions and global
temperatures are consistently rising. The
rate is such that the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change has predicted
that parts of Earth will be uninhabitable
by 2200. It will be our children’s children
who face these realities.
Stemming the temperature rise of the
Earth’s atmosphere (caused by CO2
emissions) to no more than two degrees
Celsius may be the only way to stabilise
the current environmental decline. Bezos
has a solution. He believes that our
species must move fossil-fuel-guzzling
heavy industry to space, where it will not
be subject to the constraints of gravity and
can be run using solar power, leavingEarth for people to live on and as a place
for light industry only. He believes this will
happen within “decades, maybe 100
years” and recently explained that the
major benefit of moving life and heavy
industry into the solar system is the unlimited
resources, including solar power,
meaning “a trillion humans could easily be
supported”. The Amazon entrepreneur’s
solution could mean that off-world storage
is the first step in the survival of civilisation.
Such a simple concept in theory, but what
about in practice?
Bezos’s first objective is to create a city
on the moon to house those ready to move
off Earth and to stimulate new exploration.
Blue Origin is currently working on a lunar
lander that will be able to carry payloads
of up to five tonnes, and Bezos has
indicated it could be ready by the 2020s.
But while this development is in progress,
what can we do here on Earth to reduce
our environmental impact and keep it
habitable? Moving heavy industry to
space solves the fossil-fuel problem, but
what about the other industries causing
significant environmental damage? Enter
the fashion industry as culprit number two.
Recent figures place fashion as one of
the most polluting industries on Earth, with
some ranking it as high as second,
behind oil and gas. The Ellen MacArthur
Foundation has charted the rise in
pollution caused by fast-fashion
production, which has doubled in the
past 15 years, and warns that being able
to stabilise the temperature of the Earth’s
atmosphere to two degrees Celsius >BR AVE
NEW
WORLD
OUTER-SPACE
STORAGE SYSTEMS
AND UNDERWATER
VILLAGES ARE ALL WELL
AND GOOD FOR THE
FUTURE, BUT WHAT
STEPS CAN WE TAKE
NOW TO MAKE SURE
EARTH REMAINS
HABITABLE IN THE
MEANTIME?BY BROOKE ROBERTS-ISLAM