Humanity must preserve Earth before dreaming of colonizing Mars, because even nuclear war and rampant climate change cannot make the red planet more habitable, former US President Barack Obama said.
At a renewable energy conference in the French capital, Paris, the former US president mentioned Silicon Valley "tycoons", many of whom are building spacecraft that could take humans to Mars.
“When I hear some of the people talk about the plan to colonize Mars, because the Earth's environment can become so degraded that it becomes uninhabitable, I look at them strangely, what are you talking about? "Even after a nuclear war, Earth would be more habitable than Mars, even if we did nothing about climate change, it would still have oxygen - as far as we know, Mars doesn't," Obama said, AFP reported.
"I would rather invest in taking care of this planet here," he continued, stressing that space exploration should be for the purpose of gathering knowledge and discovery, not creating a new habitable space for humanity.
"We are designed for this place and it would be good if we keep this place in a livable way," he concluded.
During his hour-long conversation, Obama discussed his climate policies in the White House between 2009 and 2017.
As for his successor and potential future president Donald Trump, a longtime climate change skeptic who pulled the United States out of the landmark 2015 Paris accord, Obama said "the facts speak for themselves." /BGNES
