Archived press release

Bush should concentrate on life on earth.not mars

14 January 2004

President Bush should concentrate on keeping the Earth inhabitable rather than spending huge sums of money sending people to Mars, Friends of the Earth said today. The call comes as George Bush is expected to announce plans to put a base on the moon and to mount a manned expedition to Mars.

While Friends of the Earth is in favour of scientific exploration, the United States, the world's biggest polluter, has not taken any significant action to combat climate change and refuses to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, the only international treaty to cut the emissions problem, despite overwhelming evidence that it is the biggest environmental threat the Earth faces. Over the past week:

A new study by leading international scientists, and published in Nature, warned that climate change could lead to the extinction of a quarter of the world's species;

Scientists have also said that the heat wave that hit Europe last summer and which was responsible for tens of thousands of deaths could be a taste of things to come.

The UK's Chief Scientific Officer, Sir David King, said that the climate change is a more serious threat than terrorism and that the US had failed to take up the challenge of global warming.

The United States makes up around 4% of the world's population, yet it emits 20% of climate changing gases, principally carbon dioxide from the burning of carbon-based fuels (such as coal, gas and oil).

Friends of the Earth's climate campaigner, Roger Higman, said

"Space exploration has given us a new perspective on our planet and new ways to measure our environmental impacts on the Earth, but the billons of dollars it will take to send a man to Mars would be far better spent protecting life on Earth. Hundreds of millions of people across the world could lose their lives or livelihoods if action isn't taken to stop climate change andup to a million species could be lost in the next fifty years.The USA, the world's biggest polluter, refuses to join other nations in tackling the problem and will not sign the Kyoto climate protocol."

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust