Life spreading from the oceans to land rocked!
Single cell life developing into multi cell life rocked!
Let’s do that again and become a multi planet life!
Being stuck on a single planet until the sun explodes and all life ceases to exist
Going to mars and protecting earth is not either-or decision. In fact the opposite is the case. Going to Mars requires technologies that we need to protect earth.
Going to Mars requires the development of technologies that can also be used to protect our environment on earth. There is no oil on mars. In order to build a settlement on mars we'll need cheap, reliable, efficient and clean energy. We'll need to find a way to make things without involving pastics, since plastics are made from oil. A mars settlement will have very limited capacity for waste, so a circular economy is a hard requirement. Reusing and recycling are not optional. We will need sustainable agriculture that doesn't ruin topsoils (or doesn't use them at all) and uses water efficiently
Space exploration uses a very small fraction of our resources and will help us long term. Reducing space spending is not going to advance the saving of earth meaningfully. Reallocating some defense spending to climate matters is a much more promising strategy, simply because there is a meaningful amount of resources to be reallocated to begin with.
Right now all live and all that has ever lived has been confined to earth. This is dangerous. Our earth is predestined to die when our sun explodes. Until then life in general has to escape out solar system.
And this is not the only threat. There have been five major exticion events on earth so far. If another one hits us, it has the potential to set us back far enough, that we won't be able to escape.
It took 4.5 billion years until life on earth developed far enough that it has a chance of escaping its host planet. We have around 0.6 billion years left before earth becomes uninhabitable. If there is even one serious setback, life will cease to exist. There is no other life in the universe that we know of. That would be it. Done. No more life anywhere in the universe.
This is not about humans. It's about life in general.
This is obviously an undesirable outcome and so we MUST take this opportunity and carry life beyond earth and the solar system.
Technology is not guaranteed to improve. We must work hard on this.
Going to mars and saving the climate are not opposites. Both strive to carry life into the future.