Dont get me wrong.
Im no sullen technophobe.
My brothers and I watched the monochrome triumph of theApollo 11 landingavidly in 1969.
We knew it was exciting up there.
What did you think?
I asked as we came out of the cinema.
It was OK, said my friend.
Just not very believable.
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We felt the endorphin rush.
We knew it was believable.
But NASAs clever science experiment is just the tip of an expansionary iceberg.
A curious twist in a debate that has been raging now for almost half a century.
Nasas Perseverance Mars rover used its dual-camera Mastcam-Z imager to capture this image.
a hill about 2.5km away.
Those who believe it can appeal to thepower of technologyto decouple economic activity from its effects on the planet.
The growth debate often hangs on the power you attribute to technology to save us.
And usually, its the skeptics arguing for apost-growth economy.
But the simple division between technophiles and technophobes has never been particularly helpful.
Yes, you were right, they imply: the Earth cannot sustain infinite growth.
Thats why we have to expand into space.
Did somebody move the goalposts?
One thing I know for sure.
Im no longer the same kid I was the one from the debating society.
This house believes that humanity should grow the fuck up.
The human condition
Perhaps ironically, it was from space that we saw it first.
In October 1957, the Soviets sent an unmanned orbital satellite calledSputnikinto space.
Sputnik kicked off the space race, intensified the arms race, and heightened the cold war.
No one likes coming second, especially the most powerful people on the planet.
Sputnik also signaled the beginning of a new relationship between humanity and its earthly home.
It was a reminder that the Earth is the quintessence of the human condition.
And nothing weve learned in the intervening years has changed that prognosis.
Mars may be the most habitable planet in the solar system, outside our own.
Its beauty is our beauty.
Its fragility is our fragility.
And its peril is our peril.
It was early evidence of climate change.
And they did nothing about it.
Worse, argue plaintiffs like thestate of Delaware, lied over and again to cover up this inconvenient truth.
Why such a thing could happen is now clear.
Profit is the bedrock of capitalism.
The most enlightened governments in the world have turned a blind eye to the need for urgent action.
Now were on the verge of being too late to fix it.
Achieving net-zero by 2050 isno longer enough.
We need much more, much faster to avoid ending up in an unliveablehothouse.
On the storm-struck east coast,floodwatershave inundated the New York subway system.
In principle, they still have time to do something about it.
Whether that happens or not will depend as much on vision as it does on science.
And on our courage to confront the inequalities of power that led us to this point.
What is the nature of the good life available to us here?
What can prosperitypossibly meanfor a promiscuous species on a finite planet?
The question is almost as old as the hills.
But the contemporary answer to it is paralyzingly narrow.
Shouldnt humanity focus on shoring up the good life on Earth before we race off into space?
Dont ask me how that happened.
I toyed with the idea of studying astrophysics.
Quite literally a formula.
Believe in it and you might travel to the stars and back.
In your mind, at least.
I changed my mind.
The next day I walked into the Greenpeace office in London and asked what I could do to help.
They set me working on theeconomics of renewable energyI became, accidentally, an economist.
(Economics needs more accidental economists.)
Mine is bigger than yours
Not so the space race billionaires.
Tesla founder and serial entrepreneur, Elon Musk is one of these new rocket men.
Those who attack space, hetweetedrecently, maybe dont realize that space represents hope for so many people.
Undeterred, the rocket men gaze starward.
If resources are the problem, then space must be the answer.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is pretty explicit about his own expansionary vision.
We can have a trillion humans in the solar system,he once declared.
Which means wed have a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins.
This would be an incredible civilization.
Bezos and Musk have spent their lockdown contesting the top two places on the Forbesrich list.
Bezoss personal wealthalmost doubledduring the course of a pandemic that destroyed the lives and livelihoods of millions.
Thedeclared aimof Musks rival company, SpaceX, is to make humanity multi-planetary.
Just likeKim Stanley Robinsons science fictiontrilogyback in the 1990s, Musk aims to establish apermanent human colonyon Mars.
The BFRs have now given way to a series of (more sedately named) Starships.
And to prove his green credentials, Musk desperately wants thesestarshipsto be reusable.
Not wanting to be outdone, Bezos came up with what he must have hoped was the ultimate comeback.
Now you really show us yourcojones!
Nobody likes coming second.
Least of all the most powerful people on the planet.
But sometimes you get no choice.
Apparently, Musk hasalready signed up.
Bezos doesnt need to.
Hes made his ownvirgin space flightnow.
Some would say its a quintessential feature of capitalism.
A driving ambition to expand and explore.
A primal urge to escape our origins and reach for the next horizon.
Space travel is a natural extension of ourobsession with economic growth.
Its the crowning jewel of capitalism.
Further and faster is its frontier creed.
Something that has been underlined by the experience of the pandemic.
Prosperity is as much about health as it is about wealth.
Health for their friends and their families.
Health too sometimes for the fragile planet on which we live and on whose health we ourselves depend.
Theres something fascinating about this idea.
Because it confronts the obsession with growth head on.
Population health provides an obvious example of this idea.
Too little food and were struggling with diseases of malnutrition.
Too much and were tipped into the diseases of affluence thatnow kill more peoplethan under-nutrition does.
Good health depends on us finding and nurturing this balance.
This task is always tricky of course, even at the individual level.
Obesity has tripled since 1975.
Almost two-fifths of adults over 18 are overweight.
Capitalism not only fails to recognize the point where the balance lies.
It has absolutely no idea how to stop when it gets there.
Youd think our brush with mortality through the pandemic would have brought some of this home to us.
And for many people it has.
Even the lure of technology pales.
Family, conviviality, and a sense of purpose come to the fore.
These are the things that many people found they lacked most throughout the pandemic.
The denial of death
Something even more surprising hasemergedduring my three decades of research.
His audience loved it.
Musk plays out his own inner demons just as disarmingly.
Im not trying to be anyones savior,he once toldTEDs head curator, Chris Anderton.
Im just trying to think about the future and not be sad.
Again, the applause was deafening.
A well-trained therapist could have a field day with all of this.
But there was also something pretty existential going on.
Its grist to the mill of an essential belief that human beings are endlessly creative and fiendishly clever.
It was explored in particular in his astonishing 1973 bookThe Denial of Death.
So too are the dreams of the rocket men.
Arendt read those words with astonishment.
She saw there a deep-seated rebellion against human existence.
It isnt just the pandemic that locks us down, the implication is.
Its the entire human condition.
The anxiety we feel is nothing new.
The choice between confronting our fears and running away from them has always been a profound one.
Its exactly the choice were facing now.
And emigrating to Mars is one hell of an escape plan.
Lets dream of some final frontier by all means.
But lets focus our minds too on some quintessentially earthly priorities.
Decent homes for the poorest in society.
A solid education for our kids.
Reversing the decades-long precarity in the livelihoods of the frontline workers the ones who saved our lives.
Regenerating the devastating loss of the natural world.
Replacing frenetic consumerism with an economy of care and relationship and meaning.
Never have these things made so much sense to so many.
Never has there been a better time to turn them into a reality.
