Have you heard of the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (with the cute acronym ARC)? While it may sound a little wild to worry about the day we can no longer live on this lovely blue planet, maybe they have the right idea. Always know where the fire exit is before you settle down in a new place.
ARC's mission is to "protect the human species and its civilization from destruction that could result from a global catastrophic event, including nuclear war, acts of terrorism, plague and asteroid collisions." How about simply bad management? None of that here, right?
The group envisions an off-site location, such as a space station or the moon, to act as a back up system. The site would store seeds, DNA, historic records, technology, literature, and more. Could we maybe store a leader or two up there - don't worry, we will call you if we need you.
We have already left a lot of our memories and technology around the solar system, and some is even leaving the solar system on the Voyager spacecraft. And what about the Russian and American space junk on the moon?
So why not try to be more orderly about it? I support the idea of a backup system, but let's also make sure we take care of what we have. The problem with any backup system is that we may take the original for granted. We may not be able to do a lot about an asteroid (though some would disagree), but war, terrorism and plague is a human specialty that we could do without (and should try and remove from the body politic, not move it out into space).
