Sustainability is destroying the Earth

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. I've already assumed the rocket is solar or nuclear powered

and said they'd need to use the reaction mass from the asteroid. But you still need massive amounts of energy to accelerate the reaction mass.

If it's not about climate change, why were you talking about carbon dioxide? You were talking about pollution. There's no reason to believe that "native metals and rare earths that are unavailable terrestrially" produce a solution to pollution or excess carbon dioxide. But energy does. And the surface area of the earth is so large that you're far more likely to to whatever elements you was here than on small asteroids - and the earth is far easier to prospect on.

Entropy is not a problem on earth; the increase in the sun's temperature is. There'll be plenty of energy, and, eventually, too much of it. But that is millions of years in the future, and is not a matter of sustainability for anything but science fiction. The problems of carbon dioxide, global warming and pollution are current.