9 People Who Must Depart Earth
A Draconian Solution to Overpopulation and Its Repercussions
Mark Cramer (author of Old Man on a Green Bike: Chronicles of a Self-Serving Environmentalist)
This planet cannot sustain us all, at least not at the current rate that we’re consuming and debasing its resources. Here we present a list of people who must prepare their bags for departure to Mars so we can save our spaceship Earth.
Let’s not get involved in polemics on how population needs to be controlled or whether improving economies will automatically reduce the birth rate. When I see coyotes roaming streets of cities like Irvine and Valencia in California, I know that we, as a species, have spread out too far. We’ve encroached on so large a portion of the Earth that biodiversity is under immediate threat and global heating is accelerating a potential sixth extinction.
Who must go?
Rather than asking, “How many must go?”, we might solve the problem by asking, “Who must go?” One measurement we can use to determine who must go is that of carbon footprint.
Just to give you some context, the average citizen in the Republic of Chad, in Africa, has a carbon footprint of 0.11 tons per year. Compared to citizens of the USA, with 15.52 tons per capita, Chadians are the least likely candidates to be sent to Mars. (See Worldometer CO2 emissions.)
This doesn’t mean that we Americans should pack our bags, since our emissions are largely determined by an infrastructure forced upon us by the fossil-fuels, construction and tech industries. We can justify our population figure by fighting to change the oppressive car-centric, agro-industrial infrastructure that has supersized our carbon footprint.
Until efforts along those lines succeed in the USA and elsewhere, we can reduce the strain on our planet by shipping the following Earthlings to Mars:
1. Bill Gates. Mr. Gates claims to be an environmentalist, as he looks for costly tech solutions for maintaining his obscene carbon footprint of 7,493 metric tons of carbon per year. Gates has written, “It’s true that my carbon footprint is absurdly high. I own big houses and fly in private planes — in fact, I took one to Paris for the climate conference — so who am I to lecture anyone on the environment?”
2. Jeff Bezos. According to a report by Oxfam, “The richest 1% of the global population has used two times as much carbon as the poorest 50% over the last 25 years.”
Bezos’ carbon footprint, at 2,224 tons, was less than Gates’, but it’s still excessive compared to the average Chadian or American. And it’s underestimated if we take the carbon footprint of his Amazon business model into consideration.
3. Elon Musk. Musk’s footprint, at 2,084 tons, is slightly less than Bezos’. As a car manufacturer Musk directly contributes to the car-centric urban sprawl that helps cover the world with asphalt and parking lots. Even if his cars were entirely clean, the amount of asphalt-covered land they occupy and have at their disposal is a great threat to our environment. Furthermore, Musk has been an advocate for Mars exploration, making him an ideal entry on this list. (See “Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates: Which billionaire has the lowest carbon footprint?” Business Today, February 23, 2021.)
4. Everest Mountain Climbers. I’ve climbed an occasional mountain and it pains me to put these spirited adventurers high on the list of those who need to depart. However, the two reasons they make the list fall into the category of “poetic justice.” First, they’ve littered one of the most amazing places on Earth with oxygen cannisters, tents, food tins, and other climbing necessities that became too heavy for them to carry at such high altitude. To this litter they added tons of shit. And second, they — more than anyone else on Earth — should be able to adapt to Mars, having survived at high altitudes with precious little oxygen.
5. The royal families of the Gulf states, especially the Saudis. You might call it geographic discrimination to blame the Gulf states for the world’s highest per capita carbon emissions, since they cannot survive without air conditioning and need motor vehicles because it’s too hot to walk or bicycle. However, with their enormous wealth, they had ample resources to research how to make the lives of their inhabitants more sustainable. Furthermore, aside from producing fossil fuels, they’re heavily invested in the military-industrial complex, and wars are a major source of environmental degradation and carbon emissions. Finally, Gulf-state royals should comfortably adapt to Mars, since their landscapes look very much like the surface of the red planet.
6. The Walton family, owners of Walmart. The Waltons are major contributors to environmental causes, but while they giveth with one hand, they taketh with the other. They are the single largest contributor to car-centric sprawl, having wiped out walkable downtown businesses. Sprawl degrades human environments, reduces biodiversity and diminishes human health and well-being. If you added the total acreage of all Walmart parking lots, you’d have enough space to create an entire nation. The surface of Mars for the Waltons will be more attractive than the Walmart parking lots they subject us to.
7. Owners of private golf courses. Working with the Montgomery County Rainbow Coalition in Maryland, I once participated in state congressional lobbying to force golf courses to pay their fair share of property taxes. Because of a supposed contribution to society called “scenic easement,” they were exempt from 90% of their tax liability. (If golfers had abstained, we’d have won the vote in the state legislature.) Private golf courses “ease” the scenery for the 1%. Today, while guzzling enormous volumes of water, they pay less than 6% of what they should pay in property taxes. (See “It’s Time to End Public Subsidies for Private Golf Courses” TheUrbanist, May 29, 2020.)
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and the Waltons will desperately need private golf course operators on Mars to create a more scenic and greener environment.
8. Instagram influencers. The fashion industry, especially fast fashion, could end up being responsible for a quarter of the Earth’s carbon budget by 2050. Influencers push for fast consumption of travel, beauty, food, fitness, toys and especially fashion. (See “How Instagram Influencers Fuel Our Destructive Addiction to Fast Fashion,” HuffPost, February 7, 2019.) With few oxidation agents in the Mars atmosphere, clothing and other consumer items will enjoy a longer life.
9. Owners of private jets. The owners of the five largest private jets, in order, are: Donald Trump (also owner of a private golf course), Roman Abramovich, whose Boeing 767 is nicknamed “Mansion in the Sky,” the Sultan of Brunei, and Prince Al Waleed Bin Tahal, who owns two mansion-sized jets. They’re all prime candidates for Mars deportation since they can afford to build comfortable spacecraft.
Yes, by pure numbers there are too many people on spaceship Earth. But among the “too many,” some are kinder to the planet than others and some are downright injurious. Here we’ve begun the process of weeding out the riffraff. Readers are encouraged to send us their nominations.
The criteria consists of just two items:
- Most damaging to the environment
- Most able to adapt to life on Mars
(Un)likeability is not a criterion, so climate denier Ted Cruz is not an automatic nomination. If you decide to research Cruz’s carbon footprint, don’t forget to include his roundtrip air flights between Texas and Cancún in your calculations.
