{"id":117,"date":"2008-01-13T13:59:24","date_gmt":"2008-01-13T20:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2017-04-16T22:27:50","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T05:27:50","slug":"lifeboat-foundation-sab-member-asks-is-saving-humanity-is-worth-the-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2008\/01\/lifeboat-foundation-sab-member-asks-is-saving-humanity-is-worth-the-cost","title":{"rendered":"Lifeboat Foundation SAB member asks \u201cIs saving humanity is worth the cost?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his most recent paper \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/jgmatheny.org\/matheny_extinction_risk.htm\">Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction<\/a>,\u201d SAB member <a href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/ex\/bios.jason.g.matheny\">Jason G. Matheny<\/a> approached the topic of human extinction from what is unfortunately a somewhat unusual angle. Jason examined the cost effectiveness of preventing humanity\u2019s extinction due to a catastrophic asteroid impact.<\/p>\n<p>Even with some rather pessimistic assumptions, his calculations showed a pretty convincing return on investment. For only about US$ 2.50 per life year saved, Matheny predicts that we could mitigate the risk of humanity being killed off by a large asteroid. Maybe it\u2019s just me, but it sounds pretty compelling.<\/p>\n<p>Matheny also made a very good point that we all should ponder when we consider how our charitable giving and taxes gets spent. \u201cWe take extraordinary measures to protect some endangered species from extinction. It might be reasonable to take extraordinary measures to protect humanity from the same.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For more coverage on this important paper please see the October 2007 issue of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.blackwell-synergy.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1111\/j.1539-6924.2007.00960.x\">Risk Analysis<\/a> and a recent edition of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nature.com\/news\/2007\/071221\/full\/news.2007.384.html\">Nature News.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his most recent paper \u201cReducing the Risk of Human Extinction,\u201d SAB member Jason G. Matheny approached the topic of human extinction from what is unfortunately a somewhat unusual angle. Jason examined the cost effectiveness of preventing humanity\u2019s extinction due to a catastrophic asteroid impact. Even with some rather pessimistic assumptions, his calculations showed a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,20,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense","category-futurism","category-geopolitics","category-lifeboat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52020,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/52020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}