David Ryder/Stringer; Scott Olson/Getty Images; Business Insider
- Barack Obama recently chastized Silicon Valley tycoons looking at space exploration to save humanity.
- Focussing on saving Earth is the best bet for now, the former president said.
- But Bezos argues that the best way to save Earth is to turn to space.
Barack Obama and Jeff Bezos are at loggerheads on how ambitious goalposts to colonize the solar system will affect Earth's future.
Speaking recently, the former US president chastized Silicon Valley tycoons for investing in projects with an aim to send humans to live off-world.
Elon Musk, for example, launched his aerospace company SpaceX with about a $100 million investment of his personal funds. And Jeff Bezos has likely invested between $7.5 billion and $20 billion in his own aerospace company, Blue Origin.
"I would rather us invest in taking care of this planet here," said Obama at the opening of the 2024 POwR.Earth Summit in Paris last week.
"When I hear some of the people talk about the plan to colonize Mars because the Earth environment may become so degraded that it becomes unliveable, I look at them like, what are you talking about?" Obama said.
Bezos, on the other hand, has said that going to space is the best way to continue humanity's growth while 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," said Bezos in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in December. Bezos did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment on Obama's point of view.
Bezos cited literacy, poverty, and infant mortality rates as examples of humanity's progress. But humanity's progress is to the detriment of planet Earth, he said.
"There's one thing that is moving backwards, and it's the natural world," Bezos told Fridman. "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."
The billionaire, who co-founded Blue Origin, a space exploration company that aims to launch its New Glenn mega-rocket on its maiden voyage by the third quarter of this year, laid out his vision for the future of a space-conquering people in his interview with Fridman.
Unlike Elon Musk, who sees humans colonizing Mars as their next venture, Bezos sees more potential in space stations.
Per his plans, humans would choose whether to live on Earth or in large space stations near Earth. Resources needed for humanity's expansion could be drawn from the asteroid belt and near-Earth objects, protecting what remains on Earth.
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 said.
"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," he said.