We, humans on Earth, cannot control our own global warming, or even agree on what part of it is caused by human activity. And we are suited by billions of years of evolution for this particular world. If we can't make it here, we can't make it anywhere.

Secondly, I believe that the coming energy crunch, population explosion, and disruptions of the current environment by global warming (no matter how "normal" on the longer scale) will result is no country being able to spend the money to colonize Mars. Not "travel to", but "colonize". A colony would need massive amounts of support for a long, long time. How would they make medicines, surgical tools, fabrics, rubber, plastics, all the things which run in the background of our lives and take massive amounts of technology to manufacture? What happens when the conditions on Mars cause, say, e. coli to mutate to a very harmful form?

And I think that Russia and China would be able to insulate themselves from much of the disruption. They are less dependent upon foreign energy, and could survive if they had to cut back their consumption severely to focus resources in some other direction.

The US couldn't. We don't have gardens anymore, we are dependent upon things like A/C, our food and other distribution systems are very long and complex. The average American family couldn't survive very long "on their own", having no connection to the countryside.

As for deserving it, if humans can't keep this place a great place to live, I don't believe we either could or would deserve to despoil another place.

Arf