Mars - it ain't no place to raise your kids. Picture by Gentlegiant, Dreamstime.com
Mars - it ain't no place to raise your kids. Picture by Gentlegiant, Dreamstime.com
The other day, on Radio New Zealand National (or National Radio as we stubborn traditionalists prefer to call it), two breathless students described their sponsored trip to the United Space program in Houston, Texas. Much of the conversation was devoted to Mars, and the misguided plan to put men on it sometime in the next 20 years.

And then the eco-freaks’ argument crept in. Apparently, according to some lunatic airheads, the Earth is doomed and so it is vital that we develop the means to emigrate to somewhere else in outer space. These prophets belong to a higher branch of the new religion, and what they say bears striking similarities to notes left on the walls of Egyptian tombs, inside pyramids now thought to have been built by earlier believers in some sort of cultish rocket science that didn’t work either. They thought that only the ruling pharoahs could quit this mortal coil and reach the stars. Similarly, only believers who can afford it can escape the fate of the countless peasants who will slave to create their 21st Century spacecraft.

Well, sorry, but we’re not going there. And neither is anybody else in the foreseeable future, although a case could be made for firing our resident crew of orbiting cranks and nutcases towards a better place. This may not be necessary, since they already inhabit a parallel universe.

The notion that some kind of fusion rocket will allow billions of diseased and starving Earthlings to emigrate to an as-yet undiscovered planet is completely and utterly preposterous. Fortunately for God and the aliens, we lack the technology that might allow humanity to go and ruin somewhere else in the expanding void.

In the 1960s, putting astropersons on the Moon was trendy and exciting. Meanwhile, millions died back home from wars, famines and curable illnesses. It was one small step for Mankind, one giant leap into the grave for others. Today, global warming is the new buzz issue and we’ll be wasting billions on Kyoto Protocol “penalties”, our earthly version of a black hole.

Kyoto has done nothing whatever to deal with malaria or starvation. It is a chimera imposed on developed nations, some of whose leaders (including our own) have adopted an almost evangelical approach to being first at “saving the planet”. Saving it from what? Certainly not from the developing nations, who are inexplicably let off from curbing their rocketing pollution. The double standards and hypocrisy are rife. For example, we ban coal-fired power stations in New Zealand, yet export coal to China at a handsome profit. But don’t we all breathe the same air?

It's our only home, so let's do some housekeeping for a change
It's our only home, so let's do some housekeeping for a change
Let’s instead get down to earth. Dump Kyoto. Dump the obscenely expensive sideshow called Human Space Exploration. Forget global warming and concentrate instead on reducing the pollution that kills countless humans. Spend the money on providing decent water and medicines to Third World people. Provide them with the means to earn a good and honest living. Get population growth under control. Clean up the air and the oceans. Replant the rain forests and kill the forest poachers.

That will be much cheaper and far more worthwhile than earning fake carbon credits or gathering Martian dust.

It would also save us from some very expensive relocation bills.