Cav's Place

This was initially just meant to be a very quick post about the next Artemis missions getting delayed, pretty much limited to yet again pointing out that we, even as a species, still can’t seem to manage to do something that we could do 55 years ago, and that even the country that did it back then, when the will and the determination to do it existed, still can’t even repeat that achievement. However, my mind then continued down that path and, seeing as the competition between the two superpowers and the fact that each felt terribly threatened if the other would get up there first led to the Space Race and therefore to that achievement, I wanted to ask why don’t we also have a Climate or Decarbonization Race, or something similar to protect biodiversity, greatly reduce inequality, eliminate poverty, eradicate preventable diseases and so on. After all, the most powerful countries could compete on those fields as well, and environmental and social problems are serious threats and whoever would solve them first would definitely be a winner on the world stage.
Well, to answer my own question, it seems to me that humanity needs losers more than winners, this determination to do whatever it takes in order to achieve something extraordinary on a large scale being driven by the desire to be able to use it against others and the fear of how others could use it against you, the fear probably being the more powerful of the two. And the problem with solving those major environmental or social problems is that everybody’d win, because at this point it’s no longer a technological problem, we know what to do, what’s missing being the will to do it, which would be proven once a major power would actually do it, at which point all the others would just follow suit and there would be no losers left. Of course, there’s also the fact that it’s not a single, specific, achievement, one moment that we can mark on the calendar and set down in history, but I do believe that the lack of losers, the fact that such an achievement won’t be something to hold over others but rather a model, a guide, that would help them quickly follow suit, is an important aspect of what holds us back. And that, once again, proves that “the chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race“.