My thoughts for this article were inspired by a letter from Joel Primackln, past president of Sigma Xi, the National Science and Engineering Honor Society. It appeared in the April 1, 2019 newsletter under the title, "Creating a Favorable Future". The main thought I gained from the letter was the issue, are we going to make ourselves go extinct, or can we act to prevent it.

As an Astrophysicist, I often think about the fact that we live on a small blue sphere that travels around a not so bright star. Our star travels through a galaxy, the Milky Way, which contains billions of other stars. And, there are billions of other galaxies. In short, if we go extinct the universe would not notice. I also like to think about humans lasting forever, and how it can be done. The future for humanity could be very exciting. To put things in perspective, before 1903 human beings could not fly. By 1969 we had put men on the moon. Our potential seems limitless.

However, I come back to the little blue ball, with its very limited resources. I put that together with our history of doubling the human population of the planet every 30 years. I look at the resources we consume, the obvious fact that they are limited, and put that together with the current population growth and I see an insolvable problem. To make the problem even worse, I see that we are polluting our air and seas to the extent of making our planet less habitable.

We, scientists, love to solve unsolvable problems. My solution is to attempt a population reduction and be more careful about our resource usage and disposal. This sounds simple, but even I can't live by most of it. My wife and I have no children; that's a start. However, I consume and I dispose of. It is my opinion that if we don't implement all three of the parts I have identified: fewer people, less or more careful consumption, and more careful disposal, we are doomed as a species.

Another aspect of the same problems is the impact of global warming. Today we have a few million people trying to migrate from less favorable areas to more favorable areas. Look at the impact that has had. In several decades, with global warming and resultant sea level rise, there are going to be billions of displaced people as opposed to millions. How are we going to deal with that?

While we scientists like to think we can solve all these problems, they are more social problems than physical science problems. By comparison, physical science problems are much easier.