Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for July 12, 2017

The ethical solution would be our last solution.

Completely setting aside the difficulty in reaching an earthlike planet, just looking at the ethical ramifications of it:

Earth’s atmosphere has been breathable about 500 million years.

There have been land plants about 470 million years.

There has been nothing resembling a human up until very recently.

There may have been some intelligent creatures during that time, but we have no evidence of it.

If you think a liverwort has as much right to live as your children, you have an ethical problem. (But if you believe that, you even have a problem being vegan and killing plants to eat them.) If you think your children are worth more than a sparrow, your ethical problem is reduced (and you can continue to eat chicken).

If you consider the fact that there are probably trillions of trillions of habitable planets in the universe, worry about the fate of any particular one is lessened. If you wanted to be sure to do no harm, locate those which will be destroyed by supernovae within 50,000 years and have no sign of intelligent life and move there for 49,000 years then leave. They will be no deader than they would have been if you were never there. You might even save some species while you are at it.

Philosophically, this also applies to Earth since it is ultimately doomed no matter what we do unless we or some other intelligence figures out a way to save it. The time scale is just greater.

To be honest, you/we might even develop methods of shielding or moving planets which would otherwise be doomed. Just because humans have been destructive at times, does not mean we caused all the destruction or that we must always inherently be destructive in the future.

And I didn’t touch on it, but colonization of space does not inherently mean finding another earthlike planet to settle. Huge habitats built of materials found in the asteroids, comets, and moons are better than nothing and would have no effect on distant planets.

What gives us the “right” is because we would be able to – however, there are plenty of complications before we get to that point. Such as civilizations allready there, not to mention carnivorous animal & plant life we would have to learn to avoid, or deal with.

Humans have a habit of weaponising any and all technological advancements, we will never reach any other inhabitable planets because the technology needed to get there will be much easier used to kill off most of the competition for what remaining resources we have here. There are those that will say that we can change this behavior, but there has been virtually no historical evidence of that beyond small groups making small changes. Practically all of the social ills of the entirety of human history still thrive somewhere and are still bubbling just below the veneer of “Civilization” everywhere.

There is only three days worth of food separating us from our barbarian ancestors.

Paradise lost, never to be regained.

I would hardly say we “blew it.” And as for “what gives us the right to exploit it,” look no further than Genesis 1:28-30. All of this was created for us, not the other way around, as we humans are uniquely in the image of God. But bear in mind we should “cultivate and care for it.” (Genesis 2:15).

The Sparrow, written by Mary Doria Russell, is an excellent story about space colonization. I don’t care for science fiction, but this is a very good read. Also, if you have lots and lots of time, David Weber’s Safehold series is a good choice. The first book in the series is Off Armageddon Reef. You need to read them in order, and the books average 600 pages. This is a combination of history and sci-fi, and again, although I don’t care for science fiction, it is worth every minute of your time.

Mmmmm, space possum.

This touches on a question I have never been able to answer: if all conditions somewhere outside Earth are right for life, will life predictably arise?

In the movie"Moon Struck" Loretta’s mother says something apropo to all this. She said, “Don’t shit where you eat.” The Earth is our home yet we fill it with toxic waste, blow it up with bombs, strip mine it and the list goes on and on. Yet the Earth will endure but will the people?

Mr. Johnson. Can we please get back to some A&J-ing in this strip? These asides just invite pessimistic and pseudo-philosophic rants.

Dear pessimists, pseuo-philosophers et. al. If we are a truly “intelligent” species, then we will survive until some cosmic cataclysm takes us out. And there are several potential cosmic wipe-outs not well published in the daily news. Predicting the future is not a built-in feature of the human species.

“YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT ALL UP! "

Here here.

Sad but true!

I believe that it was Oppenheimer that said that any alien civilization advanced enough to contact us would destroyed itself before doing so,that would include mankind.,

Sitting on a spaceship that keeps us alive, talking about taking a spaceship to another spaceship that can’t keep us alive.

This strip has been a downer for a week now.

In a Darwinian universe might makes right.

I love this particular cartoon, which I have remembered ever since I remembered it the day it came out. Thank you, Mr. Johnson!