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like we do not live on "Only One Earth." If we like, we live in a system of nine planets, 36 moons, a million asteroids, a billion comets, and a very large thermonuclear reactor/radiation source. It's all waiting for us out there. We've only to lift our heads out of the muck to find not only survival, but survival with style.

A Blueprint for Survival
    This may be a unique century in many ways. In one respect it certainly is: this is the first time that mankind has had the resources to leave Earth and make his home in the solar system. No one doubts that we can do it. It takes only determination and investment.
    Alas, we may be unique in another way: ours may be the only century in all of history when Mankind can break free of Earth. Our opportunity may not come again, per omnia seculae seculorum. Thus it could be that we have it in our power to condemn our descendants to imprisonment forever.
    After the publication of "Survival with Style," a reader commented as follows: "I remain skeptical. By the time man is forced to accept population control, the world is going to be in a sadder state than it is now. And I doubt if nations will give up their armaments and their free school lunches in order to get the resources to mine the asteroids until the situation is so bad that we probably can't mine the asteroids in time to save us."
    Unfortunately he may be right. There are no end of foreseeable crises, and enough of them could so deplete our resource base and technological ability that when we realize that we must go to space, we won't be able to get there. Furthermore, anti-technological sentiments are no joke; a great number of influential intellectuals have embraced Zero-Growth, condemn technology, and seem to want the next generation to atone for the sins of our forefathers. They do not appear to want themselves to atone; I haven't seen many leading intellectuals giving up their own luxuries, much less necessities, in order to make amends for the "rape of the Earth," "eco-doom," and the rest of what engineers and technologists are accused of. We shall continue to enjoy; but after us, The Deluge. Our children shall pay.
    And of course if Zero-Growth has its way, our children will pay; but ours won't pay as much as the children of the people in the developing countries. Those kids are doomed with no chance at all.
    Do not misunderstand. Were Earth our only source of energy and resources, I should probably myself be crying Doom. As it is, I fully support many conservation measures—and in fact I was writing pro-conservation articles as early as 1957. I've no use for wasters of Earth's bounty. But I've less use for those who would condemn most of the world to eternal poverty when there are ways that we can do something about it.
    Incidentally, the Club of Rome, which sponsored the original computer studies leading to THE LIMITS TO GROWTH, and provides much of the intellectual fuel for Zero-Growth, has now sponsored a second report entitled MANKIND AT THE TURNING POINT (MATTP). This book, unlike LIMITS, is supposed to hold out some hope for the poor. By looking at the world as a set of 10 "regions" we can, say the author of MATTP, divide the wealth and sustain what they call "balanced growth."
    Unfortunately they never tell us how. As one reviewer put it, "I do not find any clear explanation of the ways in which balancing out the regions of the world would lead to any lessening of the total demands of human civilization on the planet's living-space, resources, and vital ecosystems." (Frank Hopkins, in the October 1975 Futurist.) Moreover, the MATTP plan demands foreign aid at the rate of $500 billion a year at the end of a 50 year development period. True, there are plans with less massive foreign aid investments; but all are truly enormous.
    And this is nonsense. No politician is going to run on a platform of international bounty. No democratic—or communist—nation is going to shell out wealth at that rate. And even if, by