In less than a month, the highly anticipated new film from director Christopher Nolan, Interstellar, will be released worldwide. The film explores the depths of space, and how a group of explorers must travel to find a new inhabitable world for the human race to live on. In recent years, the world has recognized climate change and the idea that one day the Earth might be inhabitable due to a lack of resources. With this problem comes many ideas from the plot to science fiction films such as Interstellar, or to republican leader Newt Gingrich’s idea to geoengineer the Earth’s atmosphere. But with the talk of looking towards to the stars for a new home, hasn’t anyone realized that there is a perfectly suitable planet for the human race to live on in our solar system- Earth.

Space has always been a fascination of people. From Aristotle in ancient Greece, to Galileo, to Stephen Hawking; everyone has marveled at the vastness of space. But is it truly right to worry about untouchable giants far off while our own home is rotting away? Experts argue that a new planet must be found in order to save human existence, and that Earth is inevitably doomed. But they are wrong. Earth is only doomed if the people who live on it do not put in the effort to save it. There are renewable energy sources on Earth such as solar power and geothermal energy that can potentially be just as powerful as the dirty coal that is unrenewable, and causing climate fluctuations. Why look for traces of water that could have been on Mars thousands of years ago, when there is plenty of water here on Earth that needs to be saved from pollution. What pros are there?

“We don’t seem to get along well with each other here on Earth, but we do quite well in space. Space is our model for all nations,” said David Livingston, writer for the classic science fiction television show Star Trek. Livingston claims that the benefits to space exploration is the peace and connectivity it can bring to the nations here on Earth, but I think Livingston is forgetting a crucial event in world history. There was a period in American history now commonly referred to as the “Space Race” and it was full of conflict and animosity between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Not to mention this “Space Race” was over something as trivial as the moon. Earth’s natural satellite doesn’t even have any resources on it. What will it be like if oil is found on any planet or satellite in our solar system? Nation’s wage wars on Earth over natural resources, imagine the conflict that would ensue over finding untapped resources in space.

Even if a beneficial natural resource is found on an extraterrestrial body, it would only be exploited. Margaret McLean said “extraterrestrial resources ought not to be exploited to benefit the few at the expense of the many or of the solar system itself.” This idea of McLean’s coined term “Space Conservation” is too idealistic. The population is exploiting resources here on Earth for the “benefit of the few at the expense of the many”, what is to stop the same from happening in Space?

Michael Collins was one of the first men to travel into space and even he pointed out the problems more important than space exploration. He says “The planet we share unites us in a far more basic and far more important than differences in skin color, or religion or economic system.” Before humanity continues to venture deep into space the Earth needs to unite as humans rather than identifying ourselves as capitalist or communist, Christian or Muslim, black or white.