I haven’t commented because, frankly, I don’t have much to say. It’s horrible. Command Post, however, has some useful information — relief organizations that are taking donations. I’d recommend generous but careful giving.

Like Matt Yglesias and Instapundit, I’d point out that there are some striking similarities between the tragedy in South Asia and the likely outcome of an asteroid striking earth. The latter is something astronomers have been warning against for decades — Carl Sagan made an impassioned plea for research into some sort of defense system in his 1979 book Cosmos. The next known asteroid scare comes in 2029, and has a 1 in 45 chance of impacting earth, effecting the deaths of about 2 million should it hit in a high population area. It scores a 4 out of 10 on the Torino scale, the highest score yet given to a potential impact object.

The odds are slim, of course. But these are potential civilization killers. Protecting against them is a legitimate public good, one libertarians should have few qualms about supporting.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 27th, 2004 at 9:28 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.