Personally I want them to invest in reversing aging. We can worry about saving the planet/exploring space once I can live forever.
That means we'll have a lot of brainpower to figure out the space exploration thing.
If anything, it's more ecological than taking multiple generations to do it, since you wouldn't waste time having to raise researchers over and over again because the previous generation has died.
Also people would have more reason to care about the environment since it's their own life at stake.