© AFP
Earth’s nature and environment must be preserved long before humans even think of colonizing Mars. Barack Obama said this on Wednesday at a conference on energy transition in the French capital Paris.
The former US president referred to the “Sillicon Valley magnets, many of whom build spaceships.” “I love space exploration and I look forward to seeing us go to Mars and beyond. But when I hear some people say that the plan is to colonize Mars because the environment on Earth would become unliveable. What do you say then?”
“Even after a nuclear war, which I am not downplaying, Earth would be more habitable than Mars. Even if we didn’t do anything about climate change, there would still be oxygen, and as far as we know that isn’t the case on Mars,” the Democrat continued.
Obama would therefore prefer to invest in care “for the planet below”. “The reason we go to space is to explore, to learn, not because we are going to create a better situation there. We were made for this place and it would be good to be able to preserve it so that it remains livable.”