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

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. The energy and effort to get something from an asteroid are magnitudes higher

than any form of extraction on Earth, including complete protection of the environment here. To say "it is much better to mine asteroids" is ridiculous; no-one does, because we don't have the ability. Manufacturing and running the rockets and machinery necessary to get there (wherever 'there' is), extract the resources you think are worth bringing back (so far, the only one mentioned that isn't far more available on Earth is helium-3, which has only a theoretical use in one form of fusion), and land them safely on Earth would have far greater environmental impact than any form of Earth mining. It's far easier to concentrate on forms on mining here that do not destroy the environment.

And 'colonizing' space is a task that would, again, need an effort far greater than anything that humanity has ever done. It is completely irrelevant to any idea of population growth or environmental worries on Earth for the next millennium or two. If we could build habitats that humans could live in that easily, then we'd start with Earth, which is pretty much liveable already, with handy things like atmospheric oxygen. You are not going to be able to send billions of people off this planet (which is the scale that population growth has to think about) to live in a sterile, deadly place with no reason for being there.

Hawking's claim that it is needed is about having a second population centre in case of a worldwide catastrophe that would wipe out all of humanity. The nature of a catastrophe which would make life easier in space than here is highly debatable - things like the Mesozoic-ending asteroid were pretty survivable by a technological species. And, ironically, given the tenor of the OP, involve making sure a tiny fraction of humanity survives, rather than an effort to keep Earth habitable by everyone.