the "colonization" solution mentioned by your friend is not as wacky as it may initially seem if you take into account history.
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TO be certain, I do not endorse the colonisation of space solution - I think it is utopian, especially that now we do have the means of implementing the zero growth model - all that is lacking is political will.
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I suspect that a "zero growth" reform movement would face as many obstacles as a revolutionary one. Indeed, from the point of view of most capitalists, such an effort would surely seem quite rebellious (though it appears modest and reasonable to many of us) and would no doubt be strenuously resisted via propaganda and even violence.
Regarding space colonization...
Unfortunately, this is not as off-the-charts as some think. The most likely 'colonization' scenario (one that would indeed be tailored only to the wealthiest of the wealthy, their managers and other servants) would be the construction of high Earth orbit habitats stationed in Lagrangian points
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point>
allowing occupants to avoid terrestrial concerns while parasitically drawing upon the planet for essentials like water and so on. William Gibson imagined such a future in his Sprawl series --
<http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/gibson1.html>
There would be no need to move to Mars (the most likely target, after the moon - the other worlds of our solar system being extraordinarily hostile) when you could have the benefits of off world life with a far smaller risk profile (when compared to over ambitious attempts to terraform entire worlds).
This could be done today with existing aerospace engineering technology for manageable amounts of money from the super rich perspective.
I wrote that this was "unfortunate" because it means there's a far better than zero chance that it may be an exercised option for the super-elite in the not far off future (perhaps prompting them to be even more unconcerned with the planet's long term prospects - so long as their launch, resupply and repair spots are secure, why worry about the teeming billions?).
.d.
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"I never saw any of them again - except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them." --- R. Chandler, The Long Goodbye