Apocalyptic pessimism
Like Megan and others, I got a kick out of this Slate piece discussing what is the best way to label nuclear waste:
But another, more abstract problem—raised by the Hanford message in a bottle—remains unsolved: not how to store waste but how to label it. Not what container to use or where to bury it but how to explain the long-term dangers of what’s inside to a trespasser. This seemingly simple conundrum (just use a radiation hazard symbol!) is complicated by the fact that such a trespass would prove lethal if it took place not only in 60 years but in 10,000 or 100,000. China, the planet’s oldest continuous civilization, stretches back, at most, 5,000 years. And the world’s oldest inscribed clay tablets—the earliest examples of written communication—date only from 3,000 or 3,500 B.C.
But I do have a problem with this:
It’s impossible to say what apocalyptic event might separate 21st-century Americans from our 210th-century successors. Successors, mind you, who could live in a vastly more sophisticated society than we do or a vastly more primitive one.
I guess that’s true, in a way. I mean, the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone might go off or an asteroid might obliterate the vast majority of life on Earth by blocking out the sun, or something. But I don’t really buy it. The human race has been on a pretty steady upward curve for the last 7,000 years or so — some bumps in the road, of course, but bumps that led to even better times — and I don’t see any real reason for that to stop soon. Yes, the Malthusians will always whinge about peak oil and whatever else is the panic of the day, but I’d wager there’s no stopping the human race from surging forwards into a better and brighter future.
On top of this, I think there’s a pretty huge difference between warning future generations about the dangers of scientific/technological advances like nuclear power and warning against religious curses. But perhaps I’m being a bit literal here. I guess we need to give the academics something to fiddle with (and spend tens of millions of dollars on).