The Environment, Do We Need It?

[norml]

That's tonight's topic, and poll question for my show, The Servative Hour, (An hour of political commentary, your calls welcome).

It airs live, Friday morning, 2am to 3am, CST, Lincoln Nebraska time, on KZUM 89.3 FM, and can be heard online here...

http://www.kzum.org/

Sorry, there's no 800 number, if you want to call in.

[amitten]

1. Well, I'd like to see someone try to live without it.

Impossible.

[norml]

2. Could live on the Moon

in theory.

[amitten]

4. Well, but everything we would need to live would have to come

from Earth. So it's, um, kinda important to keep it in good condition.

[norml]

5. Could get comet water from deep craters at the poles

in theory.

[DrDebug]

10. The moon cannot sustain the current human population

Let's start with the size of the moon. The moon has a surface area of 3.793×10^7 km2 which is a lot, but we can only use the half turned towards the sun and can't use the parts near poles either. So let's say that 25% of the moon surface is suitable for colonization. Most of the land has to be used for agriculture, lakes to store the water etc., forest for the oxygen, so let's say 20% of the inhabitable surface is for people. That leaves 1896500 km2 for 6,000,000,000 people there, resulting in a density of 3163 people per km2. Which is comparable to Los Angeles. So it'll be a Los Angeles style urban sprawl.

Water. The real problem will be water, since a human being is watercooled and requires 1/2 gallon a day. That is 3,000,000,000 gallons a day and a trillion gallons of water per year. Where are you going to get all that water? Which planet has brazillian gallons of water? Are there trillion gallons of water in the deep craters?

[norml]

12. Oh them, well I suppose they wouldn't be part of the "we"

Those lucky few, living in tubes, growing food in bubbles, and swimming in comet ice.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Only on bad days.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. That's like your earlobe

asking whether or not it "needs" the rest of your body.

Eh, yes.

[cynatnite]

7. We've got a choice?

:sarcasm:

[norml]

9. John Travolta did it in that movie.

[Der Blaue Engel]

8. How can you not have an environment?

Are you trying to ask if we need some specific type of environment? What exactly do you mean?

[blindpig]

11. Who needs an environment when you've got a market?

The market will provide everything we need, right?:sarcasm:

[norml]

13. Two people called in, so the final tally was 3 to 0, that we do need

the environment.

Next week's topic, Slave Labor, can we live without it?