Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 17:54:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Gage Kerrigan 
Subject: (urth) Thoughts on pollution  esp.

Dear Mantis (and others),
   I would like to personally thank you (mantis) for
several things, among them being the first person to
reply to any of my postings on Urth.net. That aside, I
would also like to state how delighted I was upon
seeing your real name, and realizing that you were the
same man who has written 4 of the 20 articles/books
that encompass the report on which my question
centered. (pollution, social downfall)
   One thing I would like to clarify however, was that
I was already nearly 100% sure that economic pollution
had not continued on as magnamimous a scale as our
present day situtation, which would actually seem
quite absurd when discussing the time scale of New
Urth. Quite a few theories have been published with
the general theme of Earth will become the garbage
dump of the solar system as soon as a significant
number of people have established extended
self-maintained colonies off Earth.
   I was not concerned as much with continued
pollution greater than human carelessness and lack of
concern, more with what happened, or what went wrong.
We have witnesses the 'downfall' of our own space
program for the sole reason that it's not necessary,
and there haven't been any significant developements.
I do not partake to this view, but, obviously, some
do.
   Considering this, my inquiry perhaps should have
been the following: "what would possibly motivate us
to take the initiative towards leaving Earth". I think
that the fact that humanity has attained interstellar
technologies, and that Earth is for all purposes
medieval, suggests that is has been abbandoned for
some reason or another, and I ruled out mass attack or
invasion (from extraterrestrials, perhaps) because the
snippits of history presented in New Sun focus rather
on history that's ancient to us, and does not mention
outside-in contact.
   Air pollution could certainly be a factor, and
would not only contribute to the general disdain for
living on Earth, but might make the sun appear darker
and possibly cooler...(Hey!) Is there any evidence of
Apocolyptic ice caps? Could they have even reformed
(after o-zone repairs itself) and left the geography
similar to what it is today, but have driven many
coastside dwellers into space?
   And still, the other question... what caused the
decline of society from interstellar to, well, you
know. I doubt that a black hole which has done little
in a long time could cause a mass techno-exodus, or
that they couldn't handle some new goliaths in the sea
(esp. if they started out like Baldanders). I think
that there is a strong binding between ecosystem and
society in BotNS, and a strong case (strong in the
sense that it hasn't been disproven) since they are
two of the more important aspects when studying a
culture.

Thoughts, please.

«Lord ESN»

=====
G Willickers
    aka
Gage Kerrigan

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