Cav's Place

Yesterday I finished reading The Shadows of God, and therefore also The Age of Unreason, and that made me wonder about a few things. One of them was obviously what would happen if someone would somehow actually change the pitch of the universe, or just that of Earth? It is, of course, pure fantasy to consider anything like this, but there are also some more practical questions hidden in there: What would need to change in order to save life on Earth, including our own, from us? What would need to change in order to make us incapable of wreaking the kind of destruction we currently are wreaking?
Just to be clear, for once I’m not talking about changing the nature of humans, but of changing natural laws, as presented in that series of books. A simple exercise of imagination: What would need to stop working, or at least require much more effort for much less gain? What would need to start working, or at least require far less effort for far more gain? What would need to work differently and how exactly would it need to work? Assuming humans would still exist and still have the same thoughts and desires they now do, what would need to happen to make us unable to act in ways that cause great harm to the life forms that exist on Earth, including ourselves?

Fossil fuels are the first thing to come to my mind… What if oil and the fuels based on it wouldn’t burn anymore, or at least release very little energy in the process? What if the same thing would happen to coal as well? It would obviously force us to find different ways to generate energy and get rid of a major source of pollution, but would the solutions we’d find be better or only different, but just as bad, if not worse? This scenario is different from an “end of oil” one because we can see that one coming and either way there are plenty of reserves to ensure the continued operation of certain services that are currently seen as requiring these fuels for at least a little while longer, but if oil, and possibly also coal, would simply stop being usable as fuels all of a sudden there would be no warning and any reserves would obviously be completely useless. What would happen then? What would we switch to? If you also consider that military vehicles and rockets require such fuels as well, how would this affect our long-term capacity to harm the world and ourselves?
Next comes plastic. What if it would decay quickly? What if it’d simply rot away like, for example, meat, making it unsuitable for pretty much any of the uses we currently put it to? If it’d decay in a reasonable amount of time, we’d get rid of one problem, but if it’d decay way too quickly we’d pretty much be forced to stop using it and switch to other materials. Would those materials be renewable, fully recyclable or both, or would they be even worse? Would we be able to obtain sufficient quantities of such materials without causing more destruction? Considering that the production of plastics is another important use of oil, how would this change the world and humanity’s ability and desire to destroy it?
And what about nuclear reactions? It would be a really good change if they would no longer cause the kind of damage they currently cause to living organisms, but since their functioning is based on decay I don’t see how could things be changed in such a way as to allow them to continue functioning but no longer cause such damage. So what if powerful nuclear reactions would somehow simply stop happening? All nuclear arsenals in the world would suddenly become harmless and useless, as would nuclear power stations and nuclear military vehicles, which seems like a really good thing in itself, but the real effects would depend on what we’d replace them with. If this change would extend beyond Earth, it would also mean the end of all RTG-powered space exploration, which is something else that needs to be considered. That this would severely diminish our capacity to harm the world and ourselves seems all too obvious, but what would the other long-term effects be?

All that was about what should stop working, but we’d also need certain things to start working, or at least work much better, and the first I can think of is cold fusion. This, of course, depends on how safe would it actually end up being if it’d become so efficient and end up being used pretty much everywhere. If it would really be safe and something’d change to make it relatively easy to achieve sufficient power from such reactions, a whole lot of problems would probably be solved, but wouldn’t others be created at the same time? Could it be safe if it’d generate such large amounts of energy or would it become all too similar to current nuclear power? What kind of destruction would it enable us to sow? Considering how most humans think, can any such source of power be a good thing in our hands or would it just change the rules a little, but not the game?
I could start asking the same questions about a number of other things, but I can all too easily see how we’d use any and all of them to cause even more harm. For example imagine affinities that would, under certain circumstances, draw different atoms to different places, easily separating compounds without the need for the current harmful and wasteful processes. Or perhaps energy no longer being so easily generated by heat, but somehow by the absence of heat. The first scenario has obvious benefits, the second perhaps less obvious ones, but they’re there even so. Yet the potential for harm and destruction, direct or indirect, is undeniable if either would end up in our hands, seeing as I said I’m not assuming any change in the thoughts and desires of humans. So is there anything that could start working, or at least work much better than it currently does, that would remain only a benefit even in our hands, without being turned into a weapon or an excuse for harm and destruction?

This is just an exercise of imagination, but what do you say? Do you think that any such change would save the world from us? Do you think that any such change would save us from ourselves? Is there anything harmful that, if lost, we certainly wouldn’t replace with something equally harmful, if not more so? Is there anything beneficial that we wouldn’t find a way to use to harm and destroy? Without actually changing humans in any way, and without destroying humanity, is there a way to fully prevent us from destroying life on Earth, including ourselves?
I can’t say that I can think of anything… But if you can, post a comment, no matter how crazy the idea is. After all, this is all just a little bit of fantasy. In reality, humans will, after all, be humans, and until that changes I don’t quite see how could any less advanced life form hope to survive us, or how could we hope to survive ourselves… Which only means that we need to change humans soon, by any means necessary. It is, after all, easier than changing the laws that govern the universe. Though sometimes it seems no less impossible…