--- In marssociety2@yahoogroups.com, mark_penter wrote:

> Serious issues of trashing this planet without adequate recycling
> (recycling should be 100 Percent) poses problems of 'how will'
> issues that plague earth will be solved before Mars.

100% recycling is ridiculous. Take salt, for instance; at the
current rate of use we have only 4 billion years of proven reserves.

Concerns about the 23rd century should probably be left to our
descendents of the 22nd century; and the extent to which people in
2004 should actually be doing anything about the problems of the 22nd
century is close to zero.

What would you have advised President Roosevelt in 1904? Use of
aluminum, oil and natural gas was practically non-existent, so he
couldn't have done much to conserve, substitute renew-able sources,
or recycle.

Use of coal or wood for heating and cooking was nearly universal.
But, from our point of view, what purpose would it have served to
conserve, substitute renewable sources, or recycle either coal or
wood. We still have hundreds of years of coal in reserve. Let our
descendents in the 25th century, who will be much more capable, worry
about running out of coal.

Wood isn't used at all any more for heating or cooking (except for
nostalgic and affective pur-poses); most wood is used for paper, and
that only because our use of paper has exploded so tre-mendously
since Roosevelt's time. Not much he could have done about wood; and
anything would have been a drop in the bucket. In any case, there
are more trees growing in North Amer-ica now than in 1904; so our
20th century predecessors didn't do too badly even though they didn't
think about it much.

I think Roosevelt might advise us to quite using so much paper when
we have so many good sub-stitutes (like computer screens); and nobody
reads most of that stuff anyway. And get rid of all those copy
machines. "If you people had to use carbon paper, you'd make a lot
less copies."

I would tell the Roosevelt of 1904 to encourage scientific research
and applications, especially in medicine; market economies and free
trade; work much harder for better treatment of Negroes, Indians, and
for improvement in the position of women in your society. And
winning the Nobel Peace Price was a very great honor for you Mr.
President.

None of my advice would have anything to do with recycling, nor with
issues that were at the forefront of political discourse at the
time.

Doesn't it seem likely that the 22nd century advisor to us in 2004
would have nothing to do with issues we might consider important?
Maybe something like this:

"We don't use oil or natural gas for heating or transportation any
more. We've certainly solved the paper problem. But there's a
severe population problem; the collapse of the birth rate has made
keeping population loss at a manageable level, even with declining
mortality, a nearly im-possible task with all kinds of undesirable
social consequences. Many countries have gone so far as to forcibly
require females to produce a minimum number of children.

"Our advice to you in 2004 would be work much harder for better
treatment of people with men-tal problems, especially alcoholism and
other drug additions; and to work much harder at medical care and
providing medical care on a rational basis. And that business you
had of zero population growth was really nuts."

Of course, we know that whatever we might dream the advice of 2104
might be; the real thing will be different.