We don’t like to speculate about extra-terrestrial life because we like to keep our feet on solid ground. However, when a person of the caliber of Michael Byers links aliens and climate change, we have to make an exception. That’s because he is professor of political science at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law. So could intelligence have wiped out the aliens? Was it their downfall?
Begging the Question, Could Intelligence Be the End of Us?
Michael Byers builds his case on there being so many other planets where intelligent life forms could have evolved. In fact, statistically, they probably would have. So, if we set aside recent reports by US. Navy pilots, where did they go?
Michael first sets aside the idea that Earth is a zoo curated by aliens because we are unready for contact. Next, he stops by the possibility we are the only intelligent life form that survived some theoretical hurdle whatever that may be. Cataclysmic asteroid strikes are another possibility although the one that destroyed the dinosaurs proves these events do not necessarily destroy all life.
Could Alien Civilizations Predict the Fate of our Planet?
That Just Leaves the Possibility of Self-Inflicted Extinction …
Left with no other obvious answer, Michael Byers asks the big question, could intelligence contain the seeds of its own destruction? Could it have wiped out the aliens? The ‘Great Filter’ theory holds that ‘any intelligent life form will consume vast amounts of energy as it develops technologies’.
The pollution this causes could degrade the host planet’s ecosystem to the point the intelligent life form is at risk. The ‘Great Filter’ theory contains a logical error by assuming what happens on Earth will happen everywhere else. However it does beg the question could intelligence destroy humankind as a consequence of our hunger for energy.
If that is indeed the case, we are already some distance down the road thanks to global warming, melting ice caps and the impending release of vast quantities of methane gas. Just thought we’d mention the idea in passing …
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