Some are, for their children and children's children, but they are a minority with out any clout. But people worrying about eating tomorrow, have neither the knowledge or resources to do anything but try to survive. Action has to come from the "first world" countries, and we know who has the power there. So in the end, the future is in the hands of a few wealthy people. Until the masses get off their ass, accept science, get politically active, and make the government responsive, it won't happen.

Still, there are a lot of people making small contributions. Like when they started recycling here. There wasn't a lot of grumbling, people in general knew it was a good idea. But when it was discovered that most of the plastic they collected was being burned in the incinerator, a lot of people changed their mind.

See but that's not a contribution, it's reducing damage.

The planet is not better off because they are there and making sure that some of the products that took polluting the air to get to their place and get all the parts together are then getting recycled to not be burned and produce more air pollution. It is only less worst off then if the same people were replaced by those who would have added the extra bit of air pollution at the end to the air pollution they have already financed. That is not healing, it's minimal damage control, if you would imagine a point system, it's not a gain o +3 points, it's a loss of -7 instead of -10. If someone punched you but took a lot of effort and restraint to not punch you harder, you are not better off for their interaction with you, and neither is the planet.

This means that even in the hypothetical scenario where for some reason all the really environment-caring people left earth completely and moved to mars, earth would still get less pollution then it does now from those people over their lifetime.

Bullshit, in order the help you have to first stop hurting. Every step in stopping the hurting helps, and only baby steps are within the power of the masses. That's first world masses, as I said.

If you think all the volunteers to populate Mars would be bunny lovin' treehugger vegans, your dreaming. It would be science fiction freaks, depressed failures who feel they've nothing to lose, and a few curious scientists who wouldn't get along with the other two. :haha:

I'd have picked one that hadn't already died at least once. But, there really weren't that many choices, I guess.

:neutral:

I was presenting that as the extreme: If you are saying that people's ability to care for a planet would be split between earth and mars, for a hypothetical 50% 50% scenario which would reduce the the amount of caring for earth by 50%, then I am saying that even if you took away all the people who'd otherwise provide earth with the most environmental-caring, a 100% of the people who care about the environment, even then, earth's ecology would still benefit more from them not being on earth in the first place and thus not having a negative impact at all then from them being here and providing their "care" which is reducing their negative impact.
Obviously, it's unlikely that everyone in the green movement would be the ones to leave earth and colonize mars, in fact they might very well be more likely to stick around - in part because a lot of them care more about the aesthetics and surrounding of nature then about preserving it - but that means that you would still have people who care about the environment here on earth.

So why would they suddenly stop caring just because there is another planet? Do people care less about their countries because people in another country are doing better? Are people in Africa going "well at least the people in Sweden are enjoying healthcare so overall I wouldn't be too worried about malaria"?

I didn't say that.

I think we could probably do a better job colonizing Venus then mars, but it would be even harder to gear people to do so. At least Mars already has a following.

Ok, in that case I am not sure what you are saying.

I said people who have a nagging concern about future generations but feel helpless to makes a difference, can drop the feeling with Mars being an option.

Ok - thats what the 2nd part of the answer was for.

If anything, right now some people probably think that, "we might destroy our planet but our children can always colonize mars as a backup".

That psychology all changes once Mars colonists become a thing of the present, because then it's no longer our children, it's their children, those damn martians who think they can have everything are so so proud of their first rain forest bubble domes, f'cking snobs. It's no longer our future, it's another part of humanity that's potentially doing better then your part.

They'd certainly be aware of their environment, being tiny and fragile. Not like having the whole wide world.

One of the most interesting ideas IMO explored on that was in the Red Mars trilogy was a new kind of environmentalism. The idea that there would be people who would fall in love with the aesthetics of mars the same way people fall in love with the aesthetic of nature here, finding it beautiful for what they see around them rather then thinking of it comparatively as a more barren earth, and actually try to preserve it's current state from the formation of an increasingly terraformed ecology threatening it's existence by the people who appose them and want Mars to become more accommodating to human life.

Personally, as someone who's favorite place in nature is the Sinai desert between Israel and Egypt, I can relate to it.

It's the same as living under the ocean. Plenty of scenery but you can't relax for a moment because you need life support, and there is constant danger.

Living under the ocean is a hell of a lot easier than going to Mars and living there. And we don't have very many people living under the ocean.

But we do have plenty of machines doing that .. both in the ocean and Mars.

People still don't get it. Many still believe we need to deploy humans. Even factories have now replaced humans with something better - machines. And still, some people want to see solutions in terms of a deployed human. So many still cannot change their mindset. Best solution to Mars, oceans, or even factories is machines that replace humans. And do a better job.