The Economist 20161001 ed79b8

16 Leaders The Economist October 1st 2016
2 deed hard to accept that FARC leaders who were responsible
for holding hostages in chains for years on end, or for terrorist
bombs against a Bogotá club and defenceless villagers, should
end up in congress rather than in jail, as may happen. But the
concessions the government has made are smaller than they
look. The tribunal is likely to be rigorous. Colombian public
opinion will demand that. And so will the International Criminal
Court, which is watching closely.
Álvaro Uribe, a former president, accuses Mr Santos of
handing Colombia over to “Castro-chavismo”. That shows little
faith in his compatriots. The country has a strong and longstanding
commitment to democracy, and Colombian voters
have shown no liking for Marxists. It will take a generation,
genuine contrition and an ideological conversion for the FARC
to become electorally competitive. The notion that the agreement
will generate further violence, because it rewards crime,
is similarly hard to credit. The security forces can now crack
down on the remaining illegal armed groups in Colombia, including
the organised criminal gangs related to the drug trade.
Theywill have a free hand, too, to tackle anybacksliding bythe
FARC. In Central America, peace was followed by spiralling
crime. Because Mr Santos rejected the FARC’s demand to
weaken the security forces, Colombia can avoid that.
Advocates of a “No” vote say it would allow a renegotiation,
and tougher terms. That is unlikely. The accord comes
after four years of hard talking by an able team of government
negotiators. The FARC, though weakened, was not defeated.
The alternative to the deal is years offurther bloodshed.
Peace will not come overnight. The government has
pledged to bringroads, publicservicesand development to the
remote rural areas hit hardest by the war. The FARC has promised
to get out of drugs. Mr Santos says he will pay farmers to
grow things other than coca, despite Colombia’s squeezed
budget. It is vital that Colombians in conflict areas feel a swift
improvement in their lives.
Peace, or more war?
Despite its imperfections, the peace agreement deserves voters’
backing. Its biggest prize is the least noticed one. The FARC
has accepted democracy, the rule of law and the market economy—exactly
the things the Colombian state has been struggling
for decades to extend to the whole country. That represents
enormous progress. Colombia could set an example for
other war-torn places to imitate—ifColombians vote “Yes”. 7
Colonising Mars
For life, not for an afterlife
Seeking to make Earth expendable is not a good reason to settle otherplanets
MARS has been much possessed
by death. In the late
19th century Percival Lowell, an
American astronomer, persuaded
much of the public that the
red planet was dying of desertification.
H.G. Wells, in “The War
of the Worlds”, imagined Martian
invaders bringing death to Earth; in “The Martian Chronicles”
Ray Bradbury pictured humans living among Martian
ghosts seeing Earth destroyed in a nuclear spasm. Science was
not much cheerier than science fiction: space probes revealed
that having once been warmer and wetter, Mars is now cold,
cratered and all-but-airless.
Perhaps that is why the dream of taking new life to Mars is
such a stirring one. Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, has built a
rocket company, SpaceX, from scratch in order to make this
dream come true. On September 27th he outlined new plans
for rockets that dwarf the Apollo programme’s Saturn V, and
for spaceships with room for around 100 passengers that can
be refuelled both in orbit and on Mars. Such infrastructure, he
says, would eventually allow thousands ofsettlers to get there
for $200,000 each—roughly the median cost of an American
house. To deliver such marvels in a decade or so is an order tall
enough to reach halfway to orbit itself(see page 74). But as a vision,
its ambition enthralls.
How odd, then, that MrMusk’s motivation is born in part of
a fearas misplaced as it is striking. He portrays a Mars colony as
a hedge against Earth-bound extinction. Science-fiction fans
have long been familiar with this sort of angst about existential
risks—in the 1950sArthurC. Clarke told them that, confined
to Earth “humanity had too many eggs in one rather fragile
basket.” Others agree. Stephen Hawking, a noted physicist, is
one of those given to such fits of the collywobbles. If humans
stickto a single planet, he warns, they will be sitting ducks for a
supervirus, a malevolent artificial intelligence or a nuclear
war that could finish offthe whole lot ofthem at any time.
Claptrap. It is true that, in the long run, Earth will become
uninhabitable. But that long run is about a billion years. To
concern oneself with such eventualities is to take an aversion
to short-termism beyond the salutary. (For comparison, a billion
years ago the most complex creature on the planet was a
very simple seaweed.) Yes, a natural or maliciously designed
pandemic might kill billions. So might a nuclearwar; at a pinch
climate change might wreak similar havoc. But extinction is
more than just unprecedented mass mortality; it requires getting
rid ofeveryone. Neither diseases nor wars do that.
Otherworldly concerns
An asteroid as big as the one that dispatched the dinosaurs
might take out the whole species, but humans have had the
foresight to catalogue the asteroids up to the task and none is
comingclose in the foreseeable future. So the chance ofearthly
extinction from any known cause in the next few centuries is
remarkably low. As for the unknown—an evil AI, or predatory
aliens with intellects as “vast and cool and unsympathetic” as
those of Wells’s Martians, or the good old-fashioned wrath of
God—why would they wipe humans from the face of one
planet while leaving those on the rocknext door in peace?
Ifworrying about imminent extinction is unrealistic, trying
to hide from it is ignoble. At the margins, it is better that the best
and brightest share Earth’s risks than have a way to run away
from them. Dream ofMars, by all means, but do so in a spirit of
hope for new life, not fear ofdeath. 7