How common should Ecumenopolis be within the UFP?

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Should Ecumenopolis be more common in the Star Trek World?

Large Planet Wide cities like Coruscant in Star Wars that destroy the original planets eco system to have a Planet Wide Urban jungle?

IMO, sorta. I can see planets that didn't have much life on it, but aren't extreme enough in temperature/environment to make use of it. Then you can populate the surface of the planet with mass produced Planetary Bases that are functionally Domed City-Sized Arcologies with a city in them and all the supporting infrastructure and logistics necessary to make them work.

By the 23rd Century for Star Trek, they stated that our moon (Luna) had a population of 50 million residents.

That requires a giant chunk of the surface to be covered in habitat facilities.

But our moon (Luna) was a giant barren rock to begin with, so it's a perfect place for colonization.

I can see large domed cities with artificial city scapes inside parked onto the local planet and setup to stay.

Kind of like how Macross Frontier has large domed City Ships, you can make City Ships with the environment of your choice, and design it to be landed on the planet / parked on it.

The shape obviously wouldn't be "Egg Shaped" IMO if they were designed to be parked planet-side for the majority of it's life.

I would think a more Hexagonal Dome would be more feasible since you can tile a planet / large spheriod with large standardized Hexagonal Dome Cities.

The inner layout / content of the city can vary with each design, but the benefits of a standardized base structure would be huge.

Converting regular M-Class planets with multiple biomes into city planets doesn't seem very environmentally friendly and would be against the UFP's Eco Friendly / Green mentality when you can easily create Space Stations for people to live on and only have small colonies / cities planet side like we do now in the 21st century

The Dyson Sphere that the Enterprise-D found could be re-worked / turned into a Ecumenopolis of sorts with lots of standardized / modular domed Hexagonal Cities parked on the outside surface of the planet while the inside of the planet will have regular Planet like Atmosphere on the inside on the surface to form a Ecumenopolis or just a regular M-Class Planet surface scape, whatever the colonists would like.

Personally I would prefer a M-Class planet like inner surface so we can have things like Mountains, Lakes, Forrests, etc.

We could keep the domed Cities on the outside.

 

[Timo]

I don't see Trek colonies being likely seeds for planet-engulfing structures. Colonies tend to be trivial things, requiring nothing more than the chartering of a random space trawler, packing up a few tents and oxen, and settling down in the best spot of wilderness on a planet, with zero ambitions on expanding or exploiting the place beyond that. OTOH, if there is a resource there, the colony no doubt will be founded right on top of it, after which the expansion would take the form of a slowly accumulating single city, easily accommodating 50 million people without requiring the felling of a single tree in any other continent or even at any location farther than 100 km from downtown.

Population growth in general doesn't seem to be a thing in Trek. Only total losers procreate at will, resulting in disasters like Gideon that serve as warnings to sensible folks. So an old and established homeworld or inner colony is an even less likely origin for a Coruscant in Trek.

Some resources might require planetwide megastructures to be properly exploited. And some defensive arrangements might count as such, too. That people would choose to live mega is not supported much, though: even on the somewhat dystopian Earth of the JJverse, compact arcologies rather than urban sprawl seem to be preferred.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dumbbell]

I think there was one in Voyager something, where time was different and much faster than on Voyager. And the Borg had at least one by the looks of it.

It would be interesting to consider the development of such a thing:

Cities keep growing, eventually forming megacities.

Megacities keep growing, connecting to each other.

Mankind continues to rape Earth’s resources to serve a growing population in need.

Earth’s ecosystems are outstripped, deficit of resources.

People go to war and take what is needed, cities and populations destroyed.

Governments weaken, Earth’s natural life-support fails.

People cry out to their governments for permanent solutions.

Governments unite to tackle global problems, forming one country.

Global resources are diverted from warfare to science.

Ecology is stabilized, cities rebuilt, technology advances.

Cities begin to grow again.

Focus shifts to colonizing solar system, exploring distant worlds.

Earth’s resources dedicated to colonization, Earth’s population stabilized.

Otherworldly colonies attain independent operations.

Earth's population grows again.

Otherworldly resources diverted to Earth to sustain growing population.

Earth becomes planet-city.

Take a picture now, because it won't last.

 

[Christopher]

Should Ecumenopolis be more common in the Star Trek World?

Large Planet Wide cities like Coruscant in Star Wars that destroy the original planets eco system to have a Planet Wide Urban jungle?

Absolutely not. The idea is ecologically absurd and unsustainable. Star Trek's humanity and Federation civilization are more responsible and enlightened; they'd take care of their planetary ecologies and try to coexist with them in a non-destructive way.

The idea is also numerically ridiculous. Currently, even with 7-plus billion people on Earth, cities take up only about 3% of the planet's land surface. So it would take a preposterously huge population to fill up 100 percent of the surface with urban-density habitation -- and then where would they get their food, oxygen, etc.? Not to mention that the sheer amount of waste heat an ecumenopolis would generate would render the planet uninhabitable. In Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner's Fleet of Worlds novels set in the Known Space universe, they explain that the reason the Pierson's puppeteers' homeworlds left their star behind and migrated out into space is because the planetwide cities generate so much heat that the planets no longer need a sun and indeed couldn't survive with one.

If anything, I think the Roddenberrian ideal would be something like what Arthur C. Clarke depicted in Imperial Earth, an anti-Trantor where human habitation had become decentralized, widely spread out, largely underground, and integrated with nature, rather than hypertechnological and eradicating nature. At the very least, cities that incorporate natural elements into them widely, like extensive parklands and roof gardens, vertical farms, and other such things that you see in current greenpunk futurism.

Or something like Niven's Known Space, where the invention of teleportation led to highway systems being torn down and restored to nature or turned into vast parklands. With transporters, you don't need people concentrated into cities at all. Everyone could be spread out widely across the planet, the equivalent of a rural population distribution, but able to beam anywhere on Earth so that they'd be culturally urban and cosmopolitan. There'd really be no need for the gigantic, dense cities that are so prominent in the visuals of modern Trek productions.

 

[Deks]

I think there was one in Voyager something, where time was different and much faster than on Voyager. And the Borg had at least one by the looks of it.

It would be interesting to consider the development of such a thing:

Cities keep growing, eventually forming megacities.

Megacities keep growing, connecting to each other.

Mankind continues to rape Earth’s resources to serve a growing population in need.

Earth’s ecosystems are outstripped, deficit of resources.

People go to war and take what is needed, cities and populations destroyed.

Governments weaken, Earth’s natural life-support fails.

People cry out to their governments for permanent solutions.

Governments unite to tackle global problems, forming one country.

Global resources are diverted from warfare to science.

Ecology is stabilized, cities rebuilt, technology advances.

Cities begin to grow again.

Focus shifts to colonizing solar system, exploring distant worlds.

Earth’s resources dedicated to colonization, Earth’s population stabilized.

Otherworldly colonies attain independent operations.

Earth's population grows again.

Otherworldly resources diverted to Earth to sustain growing population.

Earth becomes planet-city.

Take a picture now, because it won't last.

That would be an example of indefinite growth which is not sustainable on a finite planet.
Trek Humanity apparently did away with that nonsense in the first 50 years and transitioned to a model based on technical efficiency, sustainability, problem solving, etc... effectively reducing its environmental impact by many times (which we can also do by transitioning to better production methodologies for example such as fully automated vertical farms, or 3d printers) and returning the existing land back to nature without affecting population size, and actually increasing it over time.
Existing cities could effectively be REDESIGNED (mostly razed - apart from existing cultural spots that are of historical significance) with environmental sustainability in mind, technical efficiency and providing an extremely high living standard for everyone.

Also, population wouldn't just continue to rise to ridiculous levels because even now the birth rates are much lower compared to replacement lines.
At any rate, in Trek, UFP might instill some limits to how much of any given planet can be populated at any given time (taking into account limits of contemporary technology, etc,).
In real life, the Earth can easily sustain many more billions of humans with 10-100x lower environmental footprint (compared to what we have now) if we simply eradicated Capitalism and wasteful practices and designed cities around human and environmental well-being (so, no, people wouldn't live in pods, etc... unless of course they chose to - but the idea is that you can easily provide each and every person with 1000 square feet [for example] without massive land requiremens - beautifully designed vertical buildings (no reason for them to look ugly and be unsustainable) the height of say 30 stories high on 1 acre of land could easily contain about 1000-1200 people.

I actually dredge the premise of people being forced into cubicles and badly designed buildings just because C(r)apitalism dictates it has to be done that way. Point is, it doesn't, and scifi makers shouldn't really project this kind of garbage into the future.

Unless there's a practical use in converting the entire planet into a city, it would be a relative waste of resources in Trek and reality (next to the fact that UFP has massive starbases and could easily build Dyson Swarms - actually, we could have also build our very own Dyson swarm too since 1990).

If C(r)apitalism reigns (like it does in SW), then sure, the nonsense would continue. In Trek (aka UFP)?
0 need to do things that way when you can get better results by doing things focusing on methods of science, technical efficiency and problem solving for the purpose of minimizing ones footprint.

 

[Timo]

...On the other hand, the Trek folks would have relatively little reason to minimize their footprint. They have access to thousands of planets and are well aware that life is not precious or rare by any metric, and that not every ecosystem is worth savoring let alone protecting in a galaxy full of Southern California copies.

Nor are there shortages in evidence: energy is unlimited and essentially free, and any substance can be created out of that energy in a cinch, but OTOH cheap star travel can be used for fetching the substance from faraway corners that are no worse for the wear of strip-mining or potential equivalent future techniques.

Yesterday, we may have thought it would take more than the lifetime of one mankind to fill the oceans with pollution or empty them of fish. Hopefully it won't literally come to that - but polluting or exhausting the galaxy is an exercise that would certainly take longer than the expected lifetime of the universe, at the rate the Trek civilizations are going.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Oddish]

It's an intriguing possibility, but you'd have to find a way to get a lot of energy there. Figure 200m square miles of land area, at 9,000 people per square mile. That 1.8 trillion people, with need for food, water, and everything else. Even with replicators, sonic showers, and molecular recycling, that's a crap-ton of juice you'd need.

Also, given that family planning is probably a thing, averaging maybe two kids per couple, population expansion of that magnitude seems unlikely.

 

[Christopher]

It's an intriguing possibility, but you'd have to find a way to get a lot of energy there. Figure 200m square miles of land area, at 9,000 people per square mile. That 1.8 trillion people, with need for food, water, and everything else. Even with replicators, sonic showers, and molecular recycling, that's a crap-ton of juice you'd need.

Not just how to get it there, but how to get rid of it once it's used up. See my above remarks about how waste heat alone would render a planetwide city completely untenable.

 

[publiusr]

Now, I can see metal poor all ceramic mining waste turned into an all city structure…Globis Cassis

 

[Deks]

Not just how to get it there, but how to get rid of it once it's used up. See my above remarks about how waste heat alone would render a planetwide city completely untenable.

We already have methods for capturing waste heat and reusing it... the process is atm not exactly hugely efficient, but it works with reasonable levels of efficiency... and over time (aka, very quickly due to exponential advancements and returns), you can get the efficiency to 99.999% or even 100% where there is no waste heat to speak of as mechanisms are integrated throughout the system to capture waste heat (or waste in any form) immediately upon being made and recylce it back into the system.

Obvioulsy though, you can use these waste recycling systems towards a much better use rather than building a planet wide mega-city.

It's an intriguing possibility, but you'd have to find a way to get a lot of energy there. Figure 200m square miles of land area, at 9,000 people per square mile. That 1.8 trillion people, with need for food, water, and everything else. Even with replicators, sonic showers, and molecular recycling, that's a crap-ton of juice you'd need.

Also, given that family planning is probably a thing, averaging maybe two kids per couple, population expansion of that magnitude seems unlikely.

There is Geothermal for one thing (an MIT study from 2006 stated that Earth alone has estimated about 13 000 Zettajoules of geothermal energy which is renewable - this was before recent tests revealed that the Earths core is much hotter, so the numbers are actually larger [200 Zettajoules of which was already extractable with technology we had in 2006] and, as technology evolves, you could extract more energy at a slower rate [there is a Geothermal power plant in Italy-Larderello which has been in operation for 100 years now and with far higher energy output than what it started with]).
Also, contrary to most people's perceptions, Geothermal is not that difficult to access (what with synthetic diamond drills and combo of lasers these days - and even back at the very start it was doable to use it as our energy requirements were much lower - so as times change and if your energy demands increase, technology will evolve fast and allow you to get more energy with greater efficiency and possibly even reduce the rate of use)... plus, we have massive amounts of pre-existing oil wells and off shore oil platforms which could be converted into Geothermal power stations (electricty and heat), and even if you want to bring money into the equation, the conversion of existing oil wells would radically reduce startup costs because most of the digging was already done... but even if you had to start from scratch, Geothermal would pay for itself in 3-7 years.

Volcanoes (inactive or active) make for fairly easily accessible large quantities of geothermal enegy.

There is also space based solar power for example (but this basically gets you started with a Dyson Swarm effectively - viable concepts for space based solar date back to mid 1980-ies -but cost wise, it was perceived as unattainable commerically - but we had the technology and resources to make it happen).

Nuclear would probably be another route (either in the form of Thorium since its at least about 4x more abundant than Uranium and doesn't produce toxic waste - although radioactive waste from Uranium can be converted into Plutonium which can also be used as another source of power - or fusion).

Wind, tidal and wave wouldn't be viable if your point is to cover a planet into a megacity... but as I said, a city on a planetary scale would be a bit pointless... otherwise, if you had a relatively small footprint on the planet (which as I said is perfectly doable), you can use also wind, tidal and wave (and no, waste wouldn't be a problem since ALL systems we create for reenwables or anything else we already can recycle - it just varies in degrees of difficulty [which are practically little on a commercial level todau] or monetary cost, but other than that, more than doable.

So, I don't think energy would be a problem at all.

Bottom line is, I think people may think living in a planet wide city would be 'cool'... but the novelty would quickly wear off and you'd probably YEARN for vegetation - at which point the megacity could whip out some seeds and cover all its buildings in vegetation until its planet wide - which wouldn't take long if the entire planet works to do so.

We DO have vertical structures for example which are covered in trees and vegetation... in fact, France recently put it into law that all new builds need to have rooftops covered in solar or vegetation/trees, but Italy does have tall buildings which was covered in trees already, so its not a novelty.

But this is why I said that building a megacity on a planetary scale is just stupid. You'd be better off building smarter designed cities with ecological sustainability in mind which would also provide an extremely high standard of living for everyone and not destroy the environment in the process.
That way, you don't have to put in the extra work to restore vegetation after its gone... you just work with what's already there.

 

[Christopher]

We DO have vertical structures for example which are covered in trees and vegetation... in fact, France recently put it into law that all new builds need to have rooftops covered in solar or vegetation/trees, but Italy does have tall buildings which was covered in trees already, so its not a novelty.

Yes. This is the real future of cities -- becoming more unified with nature, more green and ecologically sound. The old idea of a purely technological city taking over an entire planet and eradicating all its native life is an antiquated fantasy. It's also a dystopian vision from an earlier era, a time when rural life was still celebrated as the ideal and cities were seen as cold, dehumanizing industrial spaces. Today it's recognized that cities aren't dehumanizing at all, that if anything, city dwellers are more cosmopolitan and accepting of others because they interact with a wider range of people, and the resources for helping and supporting people in need are more readily available (in theory, at least, though in practice they tend to be unevenly distributed on the basis of class, ethnicity, and the like).

And concentrating the population in cities can actually be better for the environment because it reduces the size of humanity's footprint on the planet. If we switched to vertical farming and hydroponics within cities, more of the land that's now devoted to agriculture (somewhere between 40-50% of the Earth's land surface, according to the Internet) can be returned to nature, and also there will be less vehicular pollution generated by transporting food from farmlands to cities.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, "today it is recognized" tends to only be shorthand for "tomorrow we will remember that the idiots back in our day used to think". Future generations might well declare cities pure evil. And eating of plants a particularly dirty and unpure variant of it.

Trek chooses to show us one future out of many. We will be wrong to believe in any particular prediction; Trek's may not aim for plausibility much, but it does create the aura of consistency of sorts. And one of the features there is that having lots of people around is no longer a thing. And, until the 2009 movie, that cities are an outdated concept, by and large. For all we know, that one still holds true in most parts of the galaxy, with only certain old and moldy homeworlds featuring these dismal slums.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[DEWLine]

Agreed. The Trek scenario doesn't "see" a need for places like Coruscant, Weber's World (some iterations of the DC Multiverse's "Legion of Super-Heroes" era), Trantor, etc..

 

[XCV330]

Populations probably level off at a certain technological and economic balance. At least for humans. If anything keeping a population's numbers sustainable in the opposite direction might be more of a problem. Most of the world-city ideas harken back to Asimov and people who liberally borrowed or directly copied names and ideas from him.

Asimov was writing from a point where urban growth had not yet had any kind of reversals and seemed likely to continue on unchecked. He also then, and for a long time to come only thought about space settlement in terms of planetary living.

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this is a long 30 minute interview and I don't expect anyone to reasonably watch it, but if you are interested in two great minds thinking about the future, this is a rare and awesome discussion between Gerard K O'Neill (of the O'neill cylinder) and Asimov. At one point the term planetary chauvinism even comes up. (see the 10:45 time)

anyway, a civilization that can builds things like Yorktown station doesn't NEED to turn planets into world-cities.

 

[Christopher]

anyway, a civilization that can builds things like Yorktown station doesn't NEED to turn planets into world-cities.

Yup. In my original fiction, in my primary universe, it's established that most spacefaring civilizations transition to living mostly in space habitats and megastructures, since you can build vastly more habitable surface area out of the materials in an asteroid or cometary belt than you could get from a single planet's surface, and because it has advantages like not being deep in a gravity well, having more control over the environment, being able to migrate away from supernovae or other cosmic disasters, etc. Also because it lets them return their planets to nature and give the next sapient species the chance to evolve and create civilization.

 

[Oddish]

There is Geothermal for one thing (an MIT study from 2006 stated that Earth alone has estimated about 13 000 Zettajoules of geothermal energy which is renewable.

For sustainability, we need continuously extractable energy, not a set amount. We need to know how many petawatts are generated by the natural molecular decay inside the planet's inner layers, not how many joules are there. Figure that with water, sewage, food growth, whatever, each person would need 5kW continuously. So, you would need to geothermally extract 9PW for an ecuminopolis population of 1.8 trillion. Or, get the balance from hydro, solar, or fusion (hydrogen could be imported from Jupiter, it has an essentially bottomless supply).

Thing about an ecuminopolis is that you would need a specific combination of factors:
1. Bottomless energy production ability.
2. The ability to extract infinite resources from surrounding planets, and to recycle waste with incredible efficiency.
3. A culture that encouraged a high rate of reproduction.
4. No habitable planets in convenient range, i.e. no FTL travel.

 

[Christopher]

Thing about an ecuminopolis is that you would need a specific combination of factors:
1. Bottomless energy production ability.
2. The ability to extract infinite resources from surrounding planets, and to recycle waste with incredible efficiency.
3. A culture that encouraged a high rate of reproduction.
4. No habitable planets in convenient range, i.e. no FTL travel.

It'd be easier just to build megastructures out of asteroidal/cometary matter. You wouldn't have to waste energy decelerating things into or accelerating them out of a planet's gravity well, it'd be easier to dissipate waste heat, and again, you'd potentially have thousands of planets' worth of habitable surface area. I mean, if you're going to extract resources from the other bodies of your planetary system anyway, why not just build your actual habitations out in the system where they're closer to the resources? And that way you don't have your 1.8 trillion or more eggs trapped in one basket in case of an extinction-level event.

 

[Oddish]

And that way you don't have your 1.8 trillion or more eggs trapped in one basket in case of an extinction-level event.

That's a lot of egg salad sandwiches.

 

[Deks]

For sustainability, we need continuously extractable energy, not a set amount. We need to know how many petawatts are generated by the natural molecular decay inside the planet's inner layers, not how many joules are there. Figure that with water, sewage, food growth, whatever, each person would need 5kW continuously. So, you would need to geothermally extract 9PW for an ecuminopolis population of 1.8 trillion. Or, get the balance from hydro, solar, or fusion (hydrogen could be imported from Jupiter, it has an essentially bottomless supply).

Thing about an ecuminopolis is that you would need a specific combination of factors:
1. Bottomless energy production ability.
2. The ability to extract infinite resources from surrounding planets, and to recycle waste with incredible efficiency.
3. A culture that encouraged a high rate of reproduction.
4. No habitable planets in convenient range, i.e. no FTL travel.

For sustainability, we need continuously extractable energy, not a set amount. We need to know how many petawatts are generated by the natural molecular decay inside the planet's inner layers, not how many joules are there. Figure that with water, sewage, food growth, whatever, each person would need 5kW continuously. So, you would need to geothermally extract 9PW for an ecuminopolis population of 1.8 trillion. Or, get the balance from hydro, solar, or fusion (hydrogen could be imported from Jupiter, it has an essentially bottomless supply).



Thing about an ecuminopolis is that you would need a specific combination of factors:

1. Bottomless energy production ability.

2. The ability to extract infinite resources from surrounding planets, and to recycle waste with incredible efficiency.

3. A culture that encouraged a high rate of reproduction.

4. No habitable planets in convenient range, i.e. no FTL travel.

A few things to correct:

1. Bottomless energy production would be incorrect description I think. You work with what you have at the moment and the population you have to support.

We don't have 1.8 trillion people on Earth and we probably won't have that kind of amount ever (at least not while being contained to Earth - or we'll for the most part become a blend between organic and technology in the next few decades with individual consciousness uploaded into computer systems which would be able to store all our cognitive processes of collective human civilization in a tiny space which doesn't need much energy) – but I’ll address the 1.8 trillion hypothetical anyway below.

2. There are no 'infinite resources' on surrounding planets. There are finite resources available and we have the ability to produce sustainable abundance (more than enough) with technical efficiency by creating goods using superior synthetic materials and methods which can be made with minimal impact to the environment while providing a high quality of life for everyone (which we presently do not do).
For reference, someone said that that there's enough Iron in the Earth to build millions of Death Stars.

Recycling can be used with 'incredible efficiency' already to the point where mining the Earth for raw materials is just pointless (maintained only for business purposes)... we just opt to pursue the existing wasteful model as opposed to different (more sustainable and ecologically sound) methods which existed for decades.

3. Population control is entirely dependent on education and access to resources people actually need (such as quality housing, food, clean water, clean air, clothing, medical care, transportation, education, basic technology/tools, etc.).

In short, do not project the notion that population would 'infinitely expand at an enormous rate' because ALREADY we are seeing low birth rates in developed nations compared to impoverished ones (poverty is the driver of high birth rates because people try to compensate child birth deaths by having more children – which is a result of poor quality or no access to medial care, birth control, low education and no economic stability).

Unless of course you wish to see poverty conditions extent into outer space... which can happen if we don't change the socio-economic system we have, in which case, yes, you'll end up with the same problem.

This is why Humanity must solve its present problems on Earth... because I'd hate that we simply take that behavior into outer space as our existing socio-economic system is simply not sustainable for ANY kind of environment.

4. Cool, in which case, your initial projection of 1.8 Trillion people falls apart already since we established that an 'ecumunopolis' is not really a sustainable or efficient way of having all people in one proverbial basket and that the population would probably NOT reach these numbers on a single planet however you cut it… plus, under the existing system and your hypothetical parameters, an ever expanding 1.8 Trillion people would easily overwhelm the ecumenopolis (because its made of finite amount of available space) and would result in total and utter collapse which would amount to an extinct civilization because it would presumably continue to increase in population density (which would readily surpass your 1.8 trillion in no time)… so, 1.8 Trillion isn’t a ‘fixed’ number in your story… its an ever expanding one, and this is what destroys that civilization (especially since you said there are no planets nearby to expand to).

Its a lot better in that case to build a Dyson Swarm around the Sun, which can easily supply A LOT more than 1.8 trillion people with all the energy we need for the forseeable future.

To put more info into context, Humanity used about 160 000 Terawatt hours in 2015. At the time, population of Earth was 7.4 billion (just about 600 million less than now).

160 000 Terawatt hours = 160 petawatt hours used by 7.4 billion people in 2015.

Multiply 7.4 billion by 250 and you get 1,850 (1.85 Trillion) - this is assuming no improvements in efficiency and maintaining wasteful industries with 0 practical use (which to be fair is highly unrealistic, unlikely and is ALREADY changing - if ever so slowly).

160 petawatt hours multiplied by 250 = 40 000 petawatt hours for a population of 1.85 trillion.

13 000 Zettajoules that we know are in the Earth stored as Geothermal (keeping in mind this is a low number) = 3.611 million petawatt hours (about 90 years worth of total Geothermal supply [both electricity and heat] if we just use the Earth as a megacity for 1.8 Trillion people).

However, I did not stutter when I said that this is a RENEWABLE energy source (meaning the 13 000 Zettajoules is NOT a fixed number, nor will it suddenly run out after 90 years)… it renews itself for as long as the Earth itself exists.

And you can always supplement this with Solar too.

So, if my math is accurate, Geothermal alone can easily power your hypothetical (if not suicidal) 1.8 Trillion population planetary mega city – which would run itself into the ground IF the population keeps increasing (which is NOT a realistic expectation since Humanity’s population will plateau in the coming 29 years or so).

Simple fact, the sun produces 384.6 yottawatts every second.

One Yottawatt hour = 3 600 000 Zettajoules.

 

[Christopher]

This is why Humanity must solve its present problems on Earth... because I'd hate that we simply take that behavior into outer space as our existing socio-economic system is simply not sustainable for ANY kind of environment.

This has always been a false dichotomy -- "We need to solve our problems on Earth before looking to space." The two go hand in hand. Expanding into space could help us solve our problems. For one thing, it would provide more resources and clean energy. There's also the psychological and social benefit -- societies unite more and achieve more when they have a great purpose driving them. Look at all the West achieved during World War II and in the reconstruction after it, and imagine having a similar driving purpose that was constructive rather than destructive.

Of course, I'm not saying that going into space would automatically fix our problems; that would be just as invalid as the claim that space distracts us from fixing our problems. The point is that if and when we choose to work to fix our problems, we can use space travel and space resources as part of that solution. It's not about Earth vs. space; it's about the willingness to be better vs. the resistance to change, no matter where humanity goes.