[Litost]

I guess it's always worth having a Plan B, but Nate Hagens and Kim Stanley Robinson (sci-fi writer of the Mars Trilogy) discuss this and don't necessarily agree, obviously depending on what definition of "polluted beyond help" you're using etc. [1]

Nate Hagens (00:43:15):

"And to me it's very smart and famous people, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk among them say, "We're screwing up Earth. Climate is going to be bad. We need to colonize outer space and head to Mars." And that makes just zero sense to me, because on the worst thermonuclear runaway-climate scenario, Earth is still going to be a paradise next to Mars. I mean-"

Kim Stanley Robinson (00:43:43):

"I agree with you completely. That is a case that has to be made. And the thing about people like Hawkings, the thing about people like Elon Musk is they're smart, they aren't that smart. They aren't wise, they aren't philosophers, and they're not ecologists. Very often physicists will assume that ecology is just physics in action, and that they've got it all sussed out because they know the rules of physics and they can do rocketry. But you can't do plant biology just knowing rocketry. It's more complex, it's more interconnected, it's a more-complex science. And many physicists will arrogantly say that, "Because I know the laws of physics, I know everything." But they don't know how a marsh works. They haven't studied biology enough to understand their own ignorance. So how smart are you if you don't know how ignorant you are?"

[1] - https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/66-kim-stanle...