You are focusing on now, it's not about now and it's not about us, it's about the species, if our ancestors gave up in the face on every obstacle we would still number about 1000 in a small valley in Africa or most likely we would be extinct. Life expands and to quote Jurassic park life finds a way.
As I have already mentioned, even a nuclear warfare-ridden Earth is much much much more habitable than anything else in the Solar system. And frankly, with current tendencies we will simply not live to see the day where living on another planet becomes a possibility, that’s just fantasy.
Also, I don’t really see how “saving” the top 100 billionaires is a good thing. Unless the spacecraft explodes with them onboard or something...
I think we can all agree that the resources on earth are finite, I think we can also all agree that our population is increasing in an exponential rate (not that it should, but that it is).
As long as we dismiss the possibility of using our technology to use resources outside of earth we will be stuck fighting for a greater share of the diminishing resources on earth.
No matter how much you recycle there is only a finite amount of everything on earth.
Living on mars is less of a fantasy now than going to the moon was just 90 years ago. We have people living for extended periods of time in orbit, we already have the technology, we just don't have the economic base.
We expand or we go extinct that's how it is, you might not like it but that's how it is.
As far as the billionaires, dude, the billionaires have it awesome here on earth i don't think they will be moving.
Even an Earth stripped of resources, with no fresh water or farmable land, hot and wrecked by global warming, and covered in radiation from nuclear fallout is more habitable than Mars. I'm a big fan of human space exploration, but let's not kid ourselves: Mars will not be even remotely habitable (without fully-enclosed structures and mostly dependent on resources shipped from Earth) for dozens of generations, best case scenario.
Let's try a test run first: Set up a fully independent and self-sustaining habitat of 100K people somewhere in the middle of Antarctica. If we can't even make that work, what makes us think we can inhabit Mars?
The risk is Earth being hit by a meteorite that kills all humans. It'll still be habitable but with nobody left to inhabit it if we don't have another colony.
