Space Expansion Must Support Sustainability – On Earth and in Space

View the article “Space Expansion Must Support Sustainability – On Earth and in Space”.

This article, published with the Royal United Services
Institute, discusses the role of sustainability when expanding human activities
into outer space. The article illustrates how a framework for space expansion
is being set right now, but that this framework risks expanding unsustainable practices
and paradigms into space. Consequently, global civilization risks wasting
immense amounts of resources and even failing to sustain humanity at worst. In response,
the article suggests five points of emphasis for a robust sustainability …

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May Newsletter: 2021 Advising/Collaboration Program

Dear friends,

GCRI has just opened a new round of our advising and collaboration program. It is an open call for anyone who would like to connect with us. We are providing advice on career opportunities, research directions, and anything else related to global catastrophic risk. We are also discussing opportunities to collaborate on specific projects, including several active GCRI projects listed online. Whether you are new to the field or an old colleague seeking to reconnect, we welcome your inquiry. For further information, please see …

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August Newsletter: New Director of Communications

Dear friends,

It is my pleasure to announce that longtime GCRI Associate Robert de Neufville has been promoted to the position of Director of Communications. Robert will oversee GCRI’s website and newsletter, as well as lead a renewed media outreach program. He also joinsTony Barrett, Grant Wilson, and myself on GCRI’s leadership team. Robert’s work is funded through a donation GCRI recently secured from Pattern, an AI company that, like GCRI, has a “geographically decentralized” structure in which workers can live anywhere in the world. We …

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The Ethics of Outer Space: A Consequentialist Perspective

View the paper “The Ethics of Outer Space: A Consequentialist Perspective”

Outer space is of major interest to consequentialist ethics for two basic reasons. First, the vast expanses of outer space offer opportunities for achieving vastly more good or bad consequences than can be achieved on Earth alone. If consequences are valued equally regardless of where they occur then achieving good consequences in space is of paramount importance. For human civilization, this can mean the building of space colonies or even the macroengineering of structures like Dyson …

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GCR News Summary April 2016

Alpha Centauri and Southern Cross image courtesy of Claus Madsen/ESO, CC BY 4.0

John Kerry became the first US Secretary of State to visit the site of the US nuclear attack on Hiroshima. Kerry wrote in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial guest book that the site was “a stark, harsh, compelling reminder not only of our obligation to end the threat of nuclear weapons, but to rededicate all our effort to avoid war itself.” William J. Broad and David E. Sanger wrote in The New York Times …

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