Maya West

Dr. Atwell

WRTG 3030

August 6, 2018

Why Mars is an Appropriate Response to Global Warming

Where will humans be in a thousand years? On Earth? In another galaxy? Though it is hard

to say how advanced our technology will be, I believe our destiny is in the stars, light years

away. Earth will always be our home, but we’re human and pushing physical boundaries is in

our nature. There are lots of factors that motivate us to explore, the most common being the

search for resources, the need to escape danger, and overwhelming curiosity. Any one of these

motivators could bring us out of our galaxy, however, there is a recurring theme of space

exploration as a response to the threat of danger. Presently, we face a grave danger associated

with our changing climate. The notion that one day, likely soon, humans will not be able to

survive on our home planet has lead us to pursue the colonization of Mars. Because global

warming is a tremendous threat to our survival, our pursuit of a life on Mars is necessary and

inevitable.

In 1961, president John F. Kennedy promised the American people and the world that we

would put a man on the moon by the end of the century. This speech launched the Apollo

program, and in only eight years, NASA succeeded in putting a man on the moon. This was an

incredible feat, considering the lack of technology to accomplish the task at the time. If no

pressure had been put on NASA to undertake this assignment in such a short time period, it is a

sure guarantee that we eventually would have reached the moon, based on humanity’s innate
desire to explore new place and expand our horizons. However, due to this iconic speech, the

primary motivation for these missions wasn’t research, resources, or curiosity. The Apollo

program was created in response to the president’s promise to demonstrate America’s strength

to the rest of the world during the Cold War. Reaching the moon granted hope, power, and

pride to the American people.

Now, nearly fifty years after the first moon landing, we’re gearing up for trips to Mars.

NASA, China, and Russia have all expressed plans to send humans to Mars in the 2020’s and

2030’s3. The most ambitious plan for a manned mission was formulated by SpaceX founder Elon

Musk, who expects to send a crew to the red planet by 2024, only six years from now 2. Musk

doesn’t just want to send a small crew of 100 people, he wants to eventually build a Martian

city with a population of one million3. Building a colony the size of a large city on a foreign

planet today is a feat perhaps even more astonishing and seemingly unattainable as was

landing on the moon decades ago.

In 2018, we’re not yet ready to relocate anyone to another planet. As of today, Mars is a

cold, lifeless rock in space, and serves as a death sentence for anyone hoping to live there. With

our currently insufficient technology, the race to Mars feels very much like the race to the

moon. Though there might be some argument for a political motivation, due simply to the fact

that many countries are working separately, our efforts to reach this new world are not

primarily based on our desire to demonstrate power, as it was with the Apollo missions. So

then what do these two races have in common?

Simply put, people are afraid. In the midst of the Cold War, the US and Soviet Union battled

for dominance, inciting an “arms war.” This elicited fear in the world, especially in the countries
involved. In America, citizens were building bomb shelters and carrying out attack drills in

schools. Truthfully, these precautions wouldn’t have saved the country from nuclear

annihilation but were in place just to give Americans some peace of mind. Parents knew that

hiding under a desk wouldn’t be an effective strategy to save their children in school from a

nuclear bomb, but it was something. The promise in 1961 that the US has the capability of

reaching the moon helped quench that immense fear, at least in the American people. When

Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon in 1969, his country rejoiced and breathed a sigh of

relief. America felt strong and relatively safe again, at least for the time being, a feeling the

world is chasing today. As with the moon landings, the promise that we have the capability to

live on Mars alleviates fear. Unlike the moon landings, this fear isn’t political, but stems from

the threat of an apocalypse.

The word “apocalypse” may seem a bit melodramatic, but from what we know about the

current state of global warming, it’s not completely inappropriate. Especially with articles

reaching mainstream media every single day detailing the horrors of global warming and

predicting how our world will eventually change in such a way that it will no longer be able to

harbor most life, including humans. Understandably, these reports have instilled in a sense of

fear some very influential people like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, and that fear has

produced an urgent need to save humanity.

Truth be told, people should be afraid of the fate of our world. For decades scientists have

been reporting worrisome data regarding the rapid increase in the levels of greenhouse gases

in the atmosphere, the accelerated melting of the ice caps, or the increasing intensity of

weather patterns. In previous years, these warnings were largely swept under the rug,
especially in the late twentieth century. Even in the 1950’s the levels of carbon dioxide in our

atmosphere were well above the global maximum for hundreds of thousands of years1.

It’s understandable that, in the 1950’s and 60’s, there wasn’t a lot of shared fear of our

planet’s demise, considering the warnings of global warming were relatively new, not evident in

daily life, and news was spread considerably slower than in our current age of social media. In

2018, however, climate change has proved to be a clear and ever-present issue. The internet

provides the general public with access to all recorded scientific data detailing the causes and

effects of global warming over the years. Each severe unseasonal hurricane, crop hindering

drought, far spreading wildfire, or record high and low temperature days remind us how very

real climate change is.

As of today, the average global temperature has risen by nearly a full degree Celsius since

the late nineteenth century, most of which has occurred in the past 35 years 1. There have been

international efforts to maintain the average global temperature below two degrees, which is

really just an effort to slow down what we’ve started than to stop it. A two-degree hike in

temperature could still mean disaster for our world as we know it, inducing lethal heat waves in

some regions, flooding coastal cities, inhibiting crop growth, and extreme weather patterns4,5.

Now keep in mind that we’re not trying to prevent all this, but that it’s our goal, and the best

option we have. On top of that, the ice sitting on the North and South poles are melting at an

alarming rate. In the past ten years this rate tripled from the years before. Billions of tons of ice

mass were lost in the past couple decades, resulting in rising sea levels and contributing to the

extreme weather patterns1. The evidence of global warming is overwhelming and has

prompted renowned scientists to advise colonizing another planet as a backup option. The
famed physicist Stephen Hawking, for example, insists that we must colonize another planet

within 100 years to avoid mass extinction of the human race4,6. Elon Musk agrees with Hawking,

stating we must “spread Earth to other planets, or we risk going extinct.” 7 His motivations are

based on a general threat of extinction including fatal disease, killer asteroids, or catastrophic

weather events, among many others, but his impression that we need a backup option lines

with Hawking and other scientists8,9.

The rapid deterioration of the world we live in means that our kids and grandkids will see

the harsh consequences of global warming, heightened by our inability to end or sufficiently

slow down the process. Our survival instinct extends to our kin, motivating us to scramble for

solutions that will save our species. There is the option of slowing down and possibly eventually

stopping the spread of global warming. All this would require is for billions of people to

completely change the way they conduct their lives, thousands of companies to adopt new

business practices, and a couple hundred countries to instill completely renewable methods of

energy acquisition, all within the next few decades10. While technically this is possible, it’s not

likely to happen. This is partly because, while we’ve all heard of climate change at some level,

many people do not fully understand the severity of it. These people know that it is definitely a

threat and needs to be eradicated but are not willing to change their own daily routines

because the consequences seem either too far into the future or are not sufficiently alarming.

Additionally, many of us fall into the mindset that one person can’t change the world. I’m not

too proud to admit that I often adopt this thinking pattern as well. After all, will it really solve

anything if I bike to school instead of drive? If I choose to drive, what’s just one more car on the

road? That being said, I do try to “go green” in other ways like recycling, taking shorter
showers, eating less meat, etc. and I think it’s important that everyone makes a small effort like

that. Just because it’s not totally feasible to reverse climate change in the allotted time doesn’t

mean we should give up. Keeping the rise in average global temperature under the

aforementioned two degrees Celsius will buy us time to secure our Plan B.

Humans have been around for about 200,000 years and were a completely nomadic species

up until just over 10,000 years ago. Our early ancestors spread across the planet in search of

food, water, and safety. Now, in the age of smartphones, industrialized agriculture, and rocket

ships, we find ourselves connecting to our roots and again seeking a new home. Many factors

motivate us to seek new places to live, but the most serious one we face today is the threat of

our demise as a species due to our rapidly deteriorating environment. This fear is completely

warranted when we pore through the data and consider the effects our actions have had on the

climate and what this will mean for our descendants. Already we encounter some worrying side

effects of our changing climate like droughts, severe storms, and melting ice caps. Seeing all this

in action has accelerated fear in influential scientists and engineers and has triggered the

assumption that our species will not survive if we don’t leave our home planet. This in turn has

launched the race to colonize Mars. Expanding the boundaries of our home to include entirely

new planets will give the human race another leg to stand on when our home world collapses

and potentially extend our species’ lifespan for thousands of years to come. The pursuit of

establishing a significantly large colony on Mars (and likely extrasolar planets far into the

future) is not only an appropriate response to the dread incited by climate change but a

necessary one as well if we hope to save future generations.

References

1. Climate change evidence: How do we know? (2018, July 23). Retrieved from
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
2. Jones, B. (2017, September 29). Elon Musk is officially sending humans to Mars in 2024.
Retrieved from https://futurism.com/elon-musk-is-officially-sending-humans-to-mars-
in-2024/
3. Mosher, D., Kim, G., & Orwig, J. (2017, September 26). Before we can send humans to
Mars, we need to address this major health risk. Retrieved from
https://futurism.com/before-we-can-send-humans-to-mars-we-need-to-address-this-
major-health-risk/
4. Wallace-Wells, D. (2017, July 10). When Will the Planet Be Too Hot for Humans? Much,
Much Sooner Than You Imagine. Retrieved from
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-
humans.html
5. Geggel, L. (2017, April 29). How Would Just 2 Degrees of Warming Change the Planet?
Retrieved from https://www.livescience.com/58891-why-2-degrees-celsius-increase-
matters.html
6. Zorthian, J. (2017, May 04). Stephen Hawking: We Have 100 Years to Colonize New
Planet. Retrieved from http://time.com/4767595/stephen-hawking-100-years-new-
planet/
7. Tech Renaissance Man Elon Musk Talks Cars, Spaceships and Hyperloops at D11. (n.d.).
Retrieved from http://allthingsd.com/20130529/coming-up-tech-renaissance-man-elon-
musk-at-d11/
8. Creighton, J. (2018, April 10). Elon Musk: We Must Leave Earth For One Critical Reason.
Retrieved from https://futurism.com/elon-musk-we-must-leave-earth-for-one-critical-
reason/
9. Mosher, D., & Dickerson, K. (2015, October 10). Elon Musk: We need to leave Earth as
soon as possible. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mars-
colonies-human-survival-2015-10
10. Global Warming Solutions: Reduce Emissions. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/global-warming/solutions/global-warming-solutions-
reduce-emissions#.W2eqodhKgfE