Are you ready for "geoengineering?"

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Reply to
Michael Bulatovich
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That's reminiscent of terraforming about which I wrote an essay for one of my environmental-studies class awhile back.

Reply to
Warm Worm

...and of a Star Trek episode IIRC.

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

Yes, that's true. My initial interest in it was based on my early exposure to science shows or miniseries, like Nova, Cosmos or The Nature of Things, that sometimes depicted hypothetical stuff like that. I still enjoy "hypothetical pseudodocumentary science", which has included Walking With the Dinosaurs (I think that's the title) and two others of similar, computer-3D-animated style, where one was about future of life on earth and what it might look like, as well as a hypothetical alien planet. On some levels, I think these kinds of shows are preferred over the regular Hollywoody sci-fi fare.

In my essay, I mention McKay:

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Reply to
Warm Worm

Thanks for that. I note the developing ethical debate in the event of finding any life on prospective targets for terraforming. What's curious to me is that it doesn't appear that anyone has taken issue with the position that, just because we can, we should impose life on lifeless places. Maybe that will come later. It seems a bit 'life-ist" to me ; )

I'm imagining that this question will become *the* ethical question of the next millennium: "Should we, just because we can?"

Reply to
Michael Bulatovich

Yes, I was aware of that question, although I forget what position I took, if any, on it at the time I wrote the essay... Off the cuff, I'd mention a concern about all the species we're ostensibly killing off right here under our very feet... Which reminds me of a poem I wrote around that time:

STEPPING STONES

We won. Stepping on them now. Wrecklessly...

The stones in our crossing Of a shallow, fast-moving river Of evolution

With many a careless step, Some fragile stones are crushed Beneath stumbling footwork

Fossils to study at a later date, Lessons of failure

Dinosaurs... Their descendents might have had Our abusive privileges

The river grows wider, The stones become fewer and far between As our worried feet get wetter...

Will we create our own stepping stones? Or fall in, to join the thunder-lizards Of our making?

Or become the stones, themselves, Stepped upon by our Own mistakes

Reply to
Warm Worm

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