Earth is currently a place where we exist, and it seems like it’s the only place we exist. This might be a thing of the past in the following decades. We might start living on the Moon or even Mars. Even the thought of this might sound unachievable or even a little bit childish, but if we keep on living carelessly like we are doing at the moment, in the future we might be forced to evacuate the remains of planet Earth and start living on our next “Earth”, which will be eighter Mars or the Moon.
But why do we go to those planets? What’s wrong with Pluto or Saturn? Well, the main reason we are trying to colonize Mars or the Moon is that these giant orbs of matter are close to us, meaning they probably have a climate similar to our beloved planet Earth. Also since these chunks of undiscovered land are close to the earth it will be easier for us to actually go there. Say we wanted to colonize Pluto, first we would need to send a spacecraft with a robot there to check if it’s actually possible or not. If it is, then we can send our basic human needs like shelter and food. After those criteria are met we can finally send our first human being up there. This means we would have to travel at least 22.5 billion kilometres. But take Mars, which is in average 225 million kilometres away from Earth. The Moon is even closer to us at 384,400 kilometres. So it makes more sense to start from the Moon and then move onto Mars.
The sad part about the idea is that it might be sooner than we expected. The pollution levels are slowly going down but not fast enough. At this rate, the Earth will turn into a toxic wasteland. Keep in mind that there is still a possibility of a World War 3 which will delete our progress of saving Earth and it may even make it worse. The usage of nuclear weapons and chemical weapons are a big problem that might turn the Earth into a gooey mess and force us to leave to seek shelter in other planets.
So, in conclusion, the idea of living on a planet or a moon is not that utopic. In my opinion, it is possible within a few decades. Every day we see a new gadget that does something we never knew we needed or something that solves a century-old problem, in the future, we might see a gadget that solves our “Earth” problem.