I’ve got a simple idea to mitigate and prepare for climate change that would create jobs, new industries, improved living standards in Appalachia and accelerate our ability to colonize Mars.
Our planet is heating up. Politicians ignore it in favor of the mining and extraction industries while billionaires fantasize about escaping to Mars. Neither is a survivable future but I think both could be put to work for us to prosper. All it takes is a little redirection.
Giving in to mining and extraction interests will make the people of West Virginia happy in the short run but the Earth inhospitable in the long run. Shutting down these industries will destroy not only the jobs of tens of thousands of American miners but all the subsidiary engineering firms, equipment manufacturers, required infrastructure, suppliers and, most importantly, knowledge base. If the American TV manufacturing industry is anything to go on, once the industry dies, you have none of the component parts left alive to restart it. We will need to restart it, which I’ll get to later.
Going to Mars will require living permanently underground as its atmosphere is too thin to shield us from cosmic radiation, to say nothing of breathing. Perhaps we should attempt underground living on Earth before trying it out for the first time on an alien planet.
Scientists tell us our temperatures may increase by four degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Given what we’ve seen with a less than one degree Celsius increase the last couple decades, this four degree increase is going to have a huge impact on hurricanes, food production, refugees, drought and literally surviving the summer in places like Phoenix. A few days of 120 degree heat on American crops in August and we’d have mass starvation followed by the Road Warrior, an entertaining movie but not how I want to live out my retirement years.
We’ll need somewhere to shelter and grow crops away from the heat that’s more cost effective than powering air conditioning for millions of separate above-ground structures on a landscape that will be increasingly catching fire. As the mean Earth temperature is lower below the surface than above, why not find out if we can live underground before we’re forced to? We can call it a dry run for colonizing Mars if it makes people feel better.
Why can’t we take the thousands of men trained to hollow out mountains for coal to hollow out mountains for research facilities, indoor robotic farming, and eventual residential living? It’s not like it would be that big a step for many of us considering 1 in 4 Americans remain indoors all day long. I mean, come on, we spent a lot more evolutionary time living in caves than condos and the outdoors would be just an elevator ride away.
NASA spawned multiple commercial technologies and industries because they were presented with the challenge of getting to and functioning in a hostile environment. We could expect some similar outcomes in different fields directed to living in the hostile environment below our feet: industrial mycology, water purification, indoor farming, waste recycling, cyanobacteria manipulation for oxygen production to name a few. These would be the kinds of technologies that could help us in the outside world just in case 97% of scientists are wrong and we’ve got nothing to fear from anthropomorphic climate change.
We need to focus on the future instead of being chained to the past. Our political leaders still fight over social issues left over from the 60’s and 70’s while our military leaders strategize on how to control the liquified remains of life from the Cenozoic Era to fuel our war machine. It’s a colossal waste of our civilization’s time and resources when we need to concentrate on surviving the pickle that fossil fuels and industrial agriculture have put us in. It’d be best not to try and figure this stuff out when people are starving and civilization collapses. Now is the time for bold experiments and preparation.
Here’s how it could evolve. Government agencies are given the mission and funding, engineers draw up the plans, miners get to work, research personnel and their families arrive in West Virginia (boosting income and education), research conducted, expansion continues with each success. A best case scenario would have thousands of people happily living and working in the complex in 20 years, bolstering the surrounding economy, providing both an example and numerous lessons learned in case mankind has to make the move underground at some point to shrink our physical and ecological footprint, allowing the biosphere to regenerate after the thrashing we’ve given it the last couple centuries. Added bonus, we’ll have bought out the coal business, decreasing our carbon output and environmental pollution.
This may sound impossible but it isn’t. All it takes is direction and funding. The coal industry operates off a measly $32 billion in annual sales. just barely edging out pet food. Why not buy it out and put it to work doing something that will give us future value instead of future poison. That sounds like an awful lot of money until you realize that our government just gave a trillion dollar tax cut to the super wealthy who don’t need it.
Billionaire Peter Thiel won’t survive climate change in his New Zealand underground bunker and Billionaire Elon Musk won’t survive it on Mars. The tiny group of people they’d take with them wouldn’t have long term viability based on their scant numbers alone. It takes a lot of us to maintain a technological civilization. Humans are weak apes who have only gotten this far because we can cooperate toward common goals. The more people involved, the more amazing stuff we can accomplish, from hunting mastodons to landing on the moon.
We can do better than the Road Warrior. Let’s go underground.
Wes Clark Jr. 