Mars as a refuge for humanity?

Consider the 2015 Newsweek article: “Star Wars’ Class Wars: Is Mars the Escape Hatch for the 1 Percent?” which claims “the red planet will likely only be for the rich, leaving the poor to suffer as earth’s environment collapses and conflict breaks out.” The only way you could believe this would be if you had no idea how thoroughly, incredibly, impossibly horrible Mars is. The average surface temperature is about -60°C. There’s no breathable air, but there are planetwide dust storms and a layer of toxic dust on the ground. Leaving a 2°C warmer Earth for Mars would be like leaving a messy room so you can live in a toxic waste dump.

The truth is that settling other worlds, in the sense of creating self-sustaining societies somewhere away from Earth, is not only quite unlikely anytime soon, it won’t deliver on the benefits touted by advocates. No vast riches, no new independent nations, no second home for humanity, not even a safety bunker for ultra elites.

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Mars is nowhere near being a Plan B home for humanity anytime soon. Consider a worst-case climate scenario. The oceans have swollen ten meters higher, drowning New York City and Boston. Low-lying countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have been swallowed up whole. Heat waves make parts of the Southern Hemisphere uninhabitable as the planet is ravaged by floods, droughts, wildfires, and massive tropical cyclones. More than half of the world’s species die, coral reefs become bleached skeletons, freshwater sources from snowpack melt away or are fouled by rising seas, tropical diseases make their way into formerly temperate climates. Crops fail, people starve, and violence breaks out as over a billion climate refugees beat against the closed gates of the comparatively livable North.

That planet? Eden compared to Mars or the Moon. That Earth still has a breathable atmosphere, a magnetosphere to protect against radiation, and quite possibly still has McDonald’s breakfast. It’s not a world we would like to inhabit, but it is the one world in the solar system where you can run around naked for ten minutes and still be alive at the end.

Weinersmith, Kelly and Zach. A City on Mars: Can we Settle Space, Should we Settle Space, and have we Really Thought this Through? Penguin Random House, 2023. p. 2, 137-8

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here. View all posts by Milan