This is important, and unexpected. Newt Gingrich finally, and unintentionally, popped the space fantasy bubble. He blubbered out the usual “grandiosity” of a permanent “moon base” but at last, at last, at last, it sounded as senseless as it is.

Yes I was a space nut too, once. Everybody has been one. TV and movies have shown us that there are all manner of earth-like, yet exotic planets just a few convenient minutes away! Fun! Excitement! Adventure! Real Estate Opportunities! Cowboys and Aliens Shootouts! Log cabins made out of Lithium Bromide Logs, and no I don’t know what lithium bromide is. But come on, open your eyes. The universe is a DEAD ZONE in our vicinity, and when I say vicinity I’m being VERY generous. And by dead zone I mean brutally, hellishly lethal, in a way that makes Antarctica look like a naked frolic in Eden itself.

Sure, study, sure learn, send the robots and the telescopes. All for it. But the fantasy of human colonization is not just as stupid as it sounded coming out of Newt’s mouth. It’s massively dangerous. The myth has lodged in people’s heads that we can wreck Earth and then escape. There’s no escape. Repeat: NO ESCAPE. Not to the moon, not to Mars, and not Beyond. This unchallenged mythology has allowed, or caused, us to take our eye off the ball. The Blue one we live on. We’re here. We’re staying. And now we need to get seriously engaged in protecting the one and only planet we’ve got. We are a people of the Earth, by the Earth, for the Earth, or we shall all perish with the Earth.