Kenneth Ballenegger

Mike Lee:

With what we now know about extremophiles, meteors, and the tenacity of life in general, it seems clear that life or its precursors are scattered around the galaxy like the seeds of a great tree. Every time the seed of life lands in a habitable zone, it sets off a timer as evolution races to reach a stable state before exhausting the available resources. Those that do get to move to the next level. Those that don’t….

There is a threshold and we are very close to not making it. There’s a non-zero chance the carbon dioxide we pumped into the air has set off a methane cycle that accelerates global warming, that we’re already too late, and that we might not have 100 years. We need to starting thinking on a global scale about our place in the galaxy. Who cares what kind of sneakers you’re wearing? Why are we still killing each other?