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I think the desirability and feasibility of any specific human effort to prevent a particular threat to human lives depends on:
- the dollar and social cost of the effort. There is an upper limit to what can or should be achieved, which is dependent upon the amount of money available and the willingness of people to put in an effort.
- the actual amount of benefit to humanity (economic, human, moral, aesthetic, environmental) of carrying out the action, as measured by the number of lives saved and the prevention of the disruption of the economy and the disruption of the non-human environment on which society and the economy depends (e.g. the biota, soils, photosynthesis, atmospheric chemistry and composition, etc.)
- the comparative urgency of the intended specific "life saving effort" as compared to the urgency of other "life saving" measures. As one (random) example; is spending money and effort on mitigating soil degradation and ensuring that trace elements in soils are not deficient, a more urgent life-saving action than some other preventative action such as installing a tsunami warning system or preventing global warming?
- the actual odds of being killed or injured by the specific event which we are trying to guard against . For instance, the probability of a person being killed or hurt by a 10 km asteroid is probably substantially greater than the probability of being killed in an airline disaster, but there is only a miniscule chance of a specific individual person being killed by a 50 metre asteroid.
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