Jeff Bezos: ‘We Need to Move All Polluting Industry Into Space’

Noted cowboy cosplay fanatic Jeff Bezos visited the sting of area on Tuesday.

The solely hope of saving Earth from Amazon’s creeping affect was that Bezos would expertise what’s known as the “overview effect,” a sense astronauts have reported. It leads to a realization that we have to shield the planet in any respect value, and it occurs when area guests have seen the world with out borders and the fleeting environment that encases Earth.

It seems Bezos felt that.

“When you look at the planet, there are no borders,” Bezos mentioned in an interview with NBC News. “It’s one planet, and we share it and it’s fragile. … We live on this beautiful planet. You can’t imagine how thin the atmosphere is when you see it from space. We live in it and it looks so big. It feels like this atmosphere is huge and we can disregard it and treat it poorly.”

Powerful stuff from the world’s richest man. It’s a change from the cutthroat enterprise mindset. Could this sign a shift? Perhaps Bezos would need to again extra stringent taxes on the ultra-wealthy in order that billionaires don’t warp our discourse? Or perhaps he had an epiphany that he ought to provide higher circumstances for Amazon warehouse staff compelled to endure via warmth and so-called “power hours” whereas racing to meet orders? Perhaps coming again to Earth a modified man would persuade him to finish one-day delivery and its toll on the atmosphere and folks?

Please, sir. Go on. Mine ears are open.

“When you get up there, and you see it, you see how tiny it is and how fragile it is,” Bezos continued. “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry and move it into space.”

Yes, that’s proper. Jeff Bezos wish to transfer all polluting {industry} into area. The world’s richest man acknowledged this might take “decades and decades to achieve.” But one completely value it for his backside li… errr, the security of the biosphere.

Moving whole industries into area is simply unfathomable. Producing, say, an electrical Ford Bronco and even an Amazon Echo in area is kind of presumably the dumbest thought I’ve ever heard. It already requires expert staff and robots proper right here on Earth. What Bezos is proposing would require making certain applied sciences work in zero gravity (or that we excellent emulating gravity in area), getting uncooked supplies as much as your Ford Bronco area station, then transporting mentioned Bronco again to Earth.

There are, in fact, numerous different hard-to-decarbonize industries on the market equivalent to cement and metal. But the associated fee for a payload of cement to be shipped again to Earth is comically excessive. Like Scrooge-McDuck-money-vault ranges of excessive. There are additionally applied sciences being developed proper right here on Earth that would decarbonize them at or prior to the “decades and decades” timeframe Bezos is advocating for. And they’ve a jumpstart on Bezos’ nonexistent area cement factories. (Though some area startups are a minimum of pitching commercial outposts.)

When Bezos noticed the Earth bend beneath him, I’m completely certain he felt the elation and fearful in regards to the fragility of the planet. And truthfully, good for him. We ought to all be so fortunate to have that feeling, even for a fleeting couple of minutes. (And if Bezos has his method, perhaps sometime all of us will have the ability to!) But Bezos can also be a ruthless tycoon. So maybe it’s not stunning that, within the rush of endorphins of getting back from the sting of area, he laid out a plan to avoid wasting the planet that performs proper into that.