Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos Battle It Out Over The Importance Of Saving Earth Over Exploring Space 

Former President Obama is side-eyeing Amazon genius Jeff Bezos over his quest to colonize space and how it will affect Earth. 

During the 2024 POwR Earth Summit in Paris, Obama criticized Silicon Valley CEOs for their lack of investments to save the planet over sending humans to live in outer space. While Tesla guru Elon Musk launched his aerospace company, SpaceX, by investing $100 million of his own money, Bezos is rumored to have invested between $7.5 billion and $20 billion in his own aerospace company, Blue Origin. Obama thinks the money would be better put to use here on Earth. “I would rather us invest in taking care of this planet here,” Obama said. 

“When I hear some of the people talk about the plan to colonize Mars because the Earth’s environment may become so degraded that it becomes unlivable, I look at them like, what are you talking about?” 

Obama emphasizes the need to focus on severe environmental issues that threaten the way of life on Earth, such as climate control. According to the Associated Press, the U.N. weather agency is putting global warming in a state of “red alert,” blaming record-breaking increases in greenhouse gases, land and water temperatures, and glacier and sea ice melting in 2023. 

They warn the world’s efforts to reverse the trend aren’t good enough. 

But Bezos thinks going to space is the best way to save humanity’s growth by preserving the planet’s natural resources.

“In almost every way, life is better for almost everyone today than it was, say, 50 years ago or 100 years ago,” Bezos said on the Lex Fridman podcast. Backing his thoughts up with literacy, poverty, and infant mortality rates as examples of humanity’s progress, the billionaire said the progress of society is adding to the damage to the planet. “There’s one thing that is moving backward, and it’s the natural world,” Bezos mentioned.

“We have traded some of that pristine beauty for all of these other gifts that we have as an advanced society. And we can have both, but to do that, we have to go to space.”

Blue Origin hopes to launch its New Glenn mega-rocket on its first voyage by Q3 of 2024. The goal of the space exploration company is to allow humans to make a decision to live on Earth or in large space stations close by. Humanity’s expansion can be driven by resources from the asteroid belt and near-Earth objects. “Humans living near Earth could then opt to visit the planet on holiday in the same way that you might go to Yellowstone National Park for vacation,” he continued. 

“I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins.”

Read more