The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
Space col is driving the rest of humanity into extinction – the billionaires must be stopped
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Space col is driving the rest of humanity into extinction – the billionaires must be stoppedMarx 20 (Paris Marx is a technology writer who has written frequently for NBC News, CBC News, Jacobin, Tribune, and OneZero, and speak internationally on the future of transport, “Billionaire Space Colonialism Is a Dead End”, 12/22/20, https://tribunemag.co.uk/2020/12/billionaire-space-colonialism-is-a-dead-end-for-humanity, accessed 6/26/22//JL) Between the climate crisis, various accelerating social crises, and the ongoing pandemic, humanity faces immense challenges that must be tackled in the coming decade. State power will be required to direct resources into building a sustainable economy, reconstructing the crumbling social infrastructure, and ensuring a good standard of living for all — but billionaires have no stake in any of those projects. Space colonisation will do nothing to address these crises, regardless of the promises of billionaires and luxury communists alike. When they talk about how asteroid mining will bring great wealth to be shared with all or to power the green technologies that are heralded as climate solutions free of sacrifice for Western consumers, they’re simply distracting us from the difficult work that must be done if we’re to truly address the social and environmental challenges of our time. We already know that emissions need to be cut in half by 2030. That means our societies need to be radically overhauled long before asteroid mining becomes feasible — if it ever does. Green capitalists like Musk are happy to sell us a false future of electric cars and solar-powered suburbia that allow them to profit in the short-term because they can simply seal themselves off from the rest of the population when the effects of a warming climate accelerate. The capitalist logic of infinite growth that’s driving the desire for space colonisation is the same one that’s created the very problems we so desperately need to solve in the first place, and doubling down on it would be a terrible mistake. We should be particularly wary of aligning ourselves with a coalition that includes billionaires and right-wing politicians who make explicit comparisons to past colonisation projects, too: Ted Cruz, for example, has promoted space as ‘as vast and promising a frontier as the New World was some centuries ago’. That’s not to say that humanity should turn away from the stars. We should continue funding space science, but the expansion of capitalism into space and the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources do not serve those goals. Justifying space colonisation through the need for a second planet is a self-fulfilling prophecy created by people who have little regard for the lives and wellbeing of the global working class — as the pandemic has demonstrated. Capitalism is driving billionaires toward space as it drives the rest of us toward extinction. They must be stopped before it is too late. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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