I agree, as long as colonization is not seen as an alternative to securing our continued survival here on Earth, bar the kind of catastrophic events you mention.
We should think of colonization as life insurance; societal reform as a healthy lifestyle, health insurance and pension.
Exactly. And the earlier we start paying, the more we'll get if something eventually happens. We'll need a lot of time to build as good new home as we have now, that will preserve our culture, our history and our diversity. It's hundreds of years of hard work and at some point it will not be a focused project able to achieve results quickly, but rather more like regular economic development of 2-7% per year with very slow population growth (if the Earth will be green and beautiful, who will want to give birth to their child on Mars?).
