Space.

I don’t know how that word will affect you.

But I get a little breathless when I think of it.

Perhaps it is the science fiction I road as a child, or the limitless potential I see there.

Coupled with that word is disgust.

A disgust for the people who would keep us bound to this planet in chains of complacency instead of allowing us to reach, to expand.

Instead we sit on the motherworld, spewing toxins into the air, killing each other and dying slowly.

The only way humans can keep living is to expand. We must eat, we must move, we must change. The only way we hold still is when we die.

And the earth is becoming more and more the same every day.

The earth is nowhere near full yet, but at what point will we decide the damage to the environment is too much?

Desalination plants provide clean, clear, and safe water.

They also spike saline and heat levels and kill fish.

They consume massive amounts of energy, often in the forms of fossil fuels.

There is an open pit mine near Mirny, Russia so massive the wind flow around the mine has changed. It’s more than 1700 feet deep and close to 1400 feet across.

The wind is so drastic it will crash helicopters.

And we can expect more deaths like the ones in Pennsylvania coal mines as we burrow more and more for fuel.

More children will be malformed by mercury-tainted fish.

Why not go off-planet?

A strip mine on the moon won’t suck in helicopters- there is no air.

There are no fish on Mars to fill with mercury.

And why fight for land when there is plenty more across the solar system?

Certainly it will be hard, even dangerous, work.

Deaths can be regrettably expected.

But how many men and women died to find America?

How many homesteaders starved to claim the Midwest?

A few exploding rockets sending brave men and women to their deaths high in the atmosphere are preferable to everyone dying.

IT might be nuclear war, it might be pollution finally killing us all.

But if we get off earth now, something will be left.

The planet can be reclaimed.

Imagine the majesty of the endless waves of grass returning across the Midwest.

Or jaguars prowling, eyes glinting in the darkness of a returning rainforest.

It will cost, and cost dearly.

Billions of dollars have already been spent and we can’t even live off this planet.

But the costs must be paid now, before the price is too dear to pay.