From the Business Insider: “Jeff Bezos Predicts that People Will One Day Be Born in Space and Will ‘Visit Earth the Way You Visit Yellowstone National Park'”

This isn’t impossible by any means, but it sure doesn’t seem likely.  Think of all the trends that need to be reversed before something like that could come to pass.

Let’s start with climate change and its ramifications.  Suppose we’re unable to curtail emissions because the oil companies ultimately prove unstoppable, more methane is released from melting permafrost, ocean acidification proceeds to kill all aquatic animals except jellyfish, the rise of sea-levels continues to accelerate primarily due to ice melting in Greenland and Antarctica, large masses of arable land become deserts, food and potable water shortages become common, and insect-carried diseases spread uncontrollably due to lengthening growing seasons and fewer killing frosts.

That could throw a monkey-wrench into the works of ubiquitous space-travel, couldn’t it?

And climate change is by no means the end of the list.  We have the threat of world fascism, the demise of rule of law, rising white nationalism and racial hatred, the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor (aka the death of the middle class), nuclear war, religious fanaticism, unending pandemics, the unstoppable growth of China as the world power, and growing levels of ignorance as our schools ban books and the entire system disintegrates.

Please don’t tell me Jeff Bezos isn’t aware of all of this.  He simply needs to disseminate a fairy tale to prevent humankind from becoming even more hostile to him than it already is.  It’s obvious that the wealthiest few people on Earth have a clear moral obligation to use their vast riches to prevent the collapse of life right here at home.