Population control will NOT save our environment; and why Stephen Hawking was right.

[wickerwoman]

1. It's not an either/or proposition.

We need to invest in space exploration and we need to stop breeding like rabbits.

Realistically, it will be decades if not centuries before we're in a position to colonise space, assuming that it is ever economically feasible to do so and we don't run out of the resources to make it happen first. It's fine to fantacize about moon mines but what exactly are we going to mine there and how is it going to be more cost-effective than mining it on earth or creating a synthetic alternative?

We're facing the potentially catastrophic consequences of global warming (from carbon emissions, from overpopulation) in the next 10-15 years.

Switching to renewable energy might mitigate some of those consequences (downgrading them from mass extinction to widespread extinction) but we have to meet technology halfway by reducing our demands on it.

Renewable energy will barely be able to match current levels of fossil fuel consumption and will not be able to keep up with indefinite population growth. If we have to keep funnelling all out resources into earth-based infrastructure to support a constantly growing population, we will never have the resources for serious space exploration.