Great rant.

While I am and always have been a supporter of space exploration, imagining that we are going to in any way solve the problem of overpopulation through expsion of mankind's domain into other planets seems highly unlikely to me.

So unlikely in fact, that even calling for it as a goal is counter productive.

The problem of overpopulation is upon us RIGHT NOW, the solution by space exploration and colonization is not.

Space colonization wouldn't solve things here on earth, not if we knew that an earth like planet was waiting for us at the next closest star (and no such planet exists at the three closest stars from sol).

SO...mankind needs to grow up and realize that for the forseeable future he has one planet that can sustain the species or mankind is going to make itself extinct.

The solution to our SOCIAL PROBLEMS cannot be solved by the hard sciences, folks.

It's time for social sciences to step up and solve a problem or two for a change.

We have got to find the collective political will to limit and then reduce the popualtion on this plant, and we don't have fifty generations or ten generations, hell, we don't even have five generations to solve this rapidly developing problem.

If we don't get earth's population under control in this generation I frankly doubt that any kind of civilized mankind will be around by 2100.

There might be men on earth, but no civilized mankind that we understand as civilized will be here.