Rain was falling on our last afternoon in Auckland and our flight home didn’t leave until past midnight, so to pass the time while staying warm and dry, Ron and I visited a movie theater to watch Interstellar.

My basic assessment? I enjoyed this movie! — despite squirming in my seat at some of the foundational assumptions. If you haven’t seen it yet, I encourage you to do so.

The part that bothered me the most? The idea that we could or should just throw away the Earth. The rest of this very short post might qualify as a spoiler so I’m putting it behind the front page and several lines down….

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Myth of escape from a dying planet as old as coal-fired economy—magical salvation makes causing avoidable catastrophe feel less shameful.

— AlexSteffen (@AlexSteffen) November 16, 2014

As much as I liked Interstellar, I think Alex’s summation is legitimate. The Earth is not disposable. Even assuming we could cross the interstellar gulfs, we will never ever find another planet better suited to us. Our very complexity as communal organisms argues against it. We’ve evolved with our world, and we’ve developed biological defenses that allow us to live here. If we found another living planet, could we survive there? Could that world survive us? If we found a sterile planet, how many millennia would it take to make it livable? How could that ever be a better solution than healing this world?

I think people should move into space. I would love to see us develop viable space habitats and make Mars and Venus and the Moon habitable. I think we have a responsibility to do these things. But none of this will save us in the short term, and none of this will ever be available to more than a tiny slice of humanity, which is why we need to learn how to live here, in this incredibly beautiful and amazing world.

Posted on: Monday, November 17th, 2014 at 7:16 am
Categories: Movies.