Can We Save Earth For Humans? In 1989 Isaac Asimov was asked this question and delivered the following answer.
Listening to his talk he sounds rather prophetic in retrospective.
Asimov was of course a prolific author, and wrote hundreds of Science Fiction and Science books on dozens of subjects.
He calls for a totally human solution, with an international scope. He names off a large number of "dangers" that face "humanity" and hence it is "humanity" that has to come together to face these problems.
Hence he talks about some sort of world government, and asks how do we do that? Today a "world government" is rather alarming to people in the U.S. The mechanism he talks about is to have some kind of threat of world destruction. By way of example he explains potential for world government in terms of the formation of the United States. The U.S. is a conglomerate of semi-independent states.
The U.S. found it's unity in a gigantic project that included all the states, and made the differences between the states look small in comparison.
Hence for effective world government we need a gigantic project that all governments cooperate together on. He proposes space exploration as that gigantic project, speaking glowingly of solar power satellites beaming down power from outer space so that energy doesn't have to be tied to geography (e.g. who has coal, who has oil).
While poking around YouTube I found several other videos where he spoke on similar subjects.
As a teenager I of course read many of his books. It's nice to know he was concerned about these things. What do you think? Let me know below.
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